


If she belonged to me

by songforeverystory



Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: F/F, Post Season 2, curing my post killing eve depression, eventually anyway, lots of tension, possibly maybe probably sexual in nature, seriously how many times can i watch it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-18
Updated: 2019-10-14
Packaged: 2020-07-08 00:16:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 61,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19860391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/songforeverystory/pseuds/songforeverystory
Summary: Post Season 2. Eve is recruited as Villanelle's handler. Neither are very happy about it.





	1. Prague

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't written fanfiction before, but this wouldn't leave my mind. I hope you enjoy.

Her bare feet stuck to the hardwood floor as she stripped out of her jeans, leaving herself wearing only a t-shirt and panties. The bed looked tempting, but her feet carried her across the studio apartment to the kitchen where she poured herself a glass of red wine and lit a cigarette.

She brought it up between her lips, inhaling the much-needed nicotine before exhaling out of the corner of her mouth. Aching limbs carried her over to the couch and she brought the glass up to her lips, taking a long sip before setting it down beside her. Her hand made its way into her unruly curls, absentmindedly detangling them as she puffed away on the cigarette.

 _‘No smoking apartment my ass’_ she thought as she looked around. Her apartment was small, needed more than a lick of paint, but it was fit for purpose.

She channel surfed until she found something that was in English rather than Czech and thought for a brief moment about how she really should be trying to pick up the language by now, after six months.

The thought left her head quickly when a British Intelligence Service scandal was reported on Euronews, but before she could pick up the threads of the news report, her phone rang out from inside her purse.

With a huff, she put out her cigarette in the small glass dish that sat beside her glass of wine, taking another hurried sip and wiping her mouth with the back of her hand as she fished into her purse.

“Mikael, it’s Friday night” she groaned, knowing it was him interrupting her quiet evening, it was only ever him.

“Eve,” she could hear his sadistic smile through the phone, “always a pleasure” he finished, and she rolled her eyes.

“Romano?”. Eve sighed, leaning back against the couch. They’d been searching for him for weeks, maybe months now and of course he would be sighted on a Friday night when she was _supposed_ to be off the clock. Although, with this line of work, she wasn’t ever really off the clock.

She didn’t use to mind being interrupted during her downtime when it was Villanelle she was chasing, but it wasn’t Villanelle she was chasing, and she didn’t want to chase anyone anymore.

“Of course, Polastri, why else would I call?” Mikael asked, and the mention of her last name caused her to reach for another cigarette.

“Why do you insist on calling me by my ex-husband’s name, asshole? I keep telling you-“ she started, only to be cut off by her boss.

“I got some intel this afternoon about a Giovanni Romano in Budapest… Now I know what you’re thinking, Budapest of all places.” Eve hadn’t been thinking it. “It didn’t make sense, and I didn’t want to send her on a wild goose chase like last time, but it’s a confirmed sighting”. Eve heard him chuckle through the phone, his German accent distinguishable even through his laugh. She wished that she was excited like him.

“Right… well, I’ll get her on the case right away _boss_ ” she spoke, muttering around her cigarette. She couldn’t believe she was here, doing this same old shit again. Chasing, chasing. She was sick of it -- chasing, being chased.

“We can’t afford mistakes like last time, Eve… you need to make sure that she remains discreet, no one can know she’s still operating” she heard, wanting to laugh. She’d long lost her influence, truly just biding time until they realised that she was no longer useful in her current capacity and either retired her (she thought she might be better off dead than in her current situation) or better yet, allowed her to return to London.

“You know I can’t make her do anything, Mikael… I tell her one thing, she does the opposite… she’s intolerable. If you’re looking for someone to get the job done, retire her and find a new recruit.” Eve advised, surprising herself by how much she truly meant the words that left her lips.

“There’s no time for this, come by and pick up the brief,” he said, not rising to the moans and groans of Eve or her rival anymore. Their job was bigger, more important than anything that had transpired between them, and he knew they’d made an effective team before.

Before she could utter another word, she heard the line go dead and stubbed out her second cigarette, pulling her body up off of the couch and reaching for her pants. Her t-shirt rode up and exposed her stomach. Eyes dialled in on the scar, a permanent mark given to her by the woman she was going to see, the woman she would never forgive, the woman she hated.

She scratched her fingernail over it.

_Son of a bitch._

-

Rome was two years ago. Villanelle had callously shot her in the side in reaction to her rejection. Eve had been surprised, or at least she was when she woke up alone in an Italian hospital, bemused faces staring down, asking “what happened?”.

She had no words.

 _Had she seen the assailant?_ No. It wasn’t a lie, she’d never seen that Villanelle before, not really. That was the Villanelle that everyone had warned her about.

 _“She’ll love you to death”_ Konstantin’s words had tormented her for months after the fact.

Except she wasn’t dead. She wished that she was dead, perhaps.

When they had met in Paris, she thought that she had lost everything, but she had been sorely mistaken. Three weeks of recovery in Italy and she had returned to London, divorce papers served, their two-between townhouse sold, the Vauxhall offices relocated. Everything and everyone – gone.

She didn’t fight for any of it, she was done fighting. The realisation that she and Villanelle weren’t that different was enough for her to leave that life behind entirely.

Partly due to shame, the inability to face those that had seen the change occur and tried to warn her. Partly because she knew she’d be beyond the point of no return if she continued in the same circle. Villanelle, the line of work… it fascinated her, dragged that darkness out of her entirely and that terrified her. She told herself that she wanted to try again, to be good.

A two-star hotel on the outskirts of central London and a job at a research company were the first steps she took to put herself back together, to forget about all that had transpired over the last year.

After three months, she had her own apartment.

The only things that separated her from the average person were the deadbolt on her front door and the knives littered across the apartment. She wasn’t frightened, but she was prepared for Villanelle to come and finish the job, expecting it every day.

Hoping for it.

She wanted to spar with the young woman.

She wanted revenge and considered for a second that if Villanelle were to show up, she would try to outmanoeuvre her somehow.

Her job was boring, but boring was better for her than chasing assassins around the globe.

She rejected the notion that she could no longer chase assassins because she had become the very thing that she had once chased.

 _‘You’re not an assassin, Eve… just a murderer’_ she thought to herself as though that was supposed to reassure her, regretting that it did somewhat.

-

Eighteen months on from Rome and she wondered just what it would take for her to stop being angry at Villanelle, to stop thinking of her, to stop wondering if the young woman thought about her too.

She was a shell of her former self, but that was a good thing. She had work friends, neighbours that trusted her around their kids (she didn’t quite trust herself sometimes when they were particularly bratty). She’d kept up the façade for eighteen months straight. She was pleased with herself.

Villanelle hadn’t won.

-

Jerome had been a new addition to their little team at work, and within weeks she found herself fully immersed back in that old world.

It had started with him inviting himself to pub quizzes on Friday nights. His prying questions had unnerved Eve. She felt like he knew something, which was impossible.

One Friday, she headed home early, shivering with discomfort the whole walk home. She’d locked the door, checked it twice and settled with a glass of wine on the couch.

Jerome had appeared on her balcony and her mind had initially gone to ‘rapist’. He’d always made her uncomfortable, and she refused to acknowledge the very real possibility that he could somehow be associated with Villanelle.

It wasn’t the woman’s style, to get someone else to do her dirty work.

She’d let him into her apartment against her better judgement, not wanting to pay for damages and just like that, her whole life changed again.

She was confronted with a file which suggested that the Twelve had been investigating her ever since Rome, keeping tabs on her, monitoring her, with plans to extract her and recruit her against her will.

_An imminent threat to her safety._

Jerome explained that a few of the Twelve’s higher-ups had broken away from the organisation, having grown fearful that the Twelve were gaining serious momentum. Originally intended to cut out the corrupt members of global politics, they had infiltrated all major intelligence services and were planning on total world domination. They were powerful, and they were killing anyone that got in their way.

_A new organisation._

Ironically named the Four, it was Mikael that she learned of next, turning up with one simple knock to her front door. Jerome let him it. The Four were intending to bring down the larger Twelve, or Eight, she had no idea at this point, and ‘clean-up’ the system, so to speak.

_Prague._

They were operating out of the Czech Republic. Both men refused to answer her questions, couldn’t tell her who they were working for. The same old bullshit and she wasn’t doing it again, she couldn’t do it again.

 _“I want no part in it, let them kill me”_ Eve had uttered, stumped to be told that if she didn’t comply, they would kill her themselves.

 _“I thought you were the good guys?”_ she had asked.

Before she knew it, a bag was packed, and she was on her way to Prague.

Too much, too soon, and once again, no choice.

She wasn’t excited, not like last time. She tried to brush off the feeling that there was only one hand she wished to die by, but she knew that that was exactly the reason she was going.

It was approaching midnight, Saturday night when they arrived in Prague. They hadn’t taken a direct flight, to ensure that they weren’t being followed. A fake passport and other documentation were ready and waiting to throw anyone further off the scent.

They had taken her to the luxurious Alcron Hotel in the city centre and told her that she would have some time to get settled in, find an apartment as such.

She was highly suspicious and didn’t trust them for a second.

 _“What good am I to you guys?”_ she had asked, frustrated. She didn’t want to be here, involved in this, whatever it was.

Their response had been to give her a new phone, her own left behind in London. They told her to contact them when she had found an apartment to her taste, that it would all be taken care of for her.

She couldn’t understand it. She had laid awake trying to piece it all together. How much did they know?

She had wondered if Villanelle felt this way when she had a job and stayed in fancy hotels provided to her by her employers.

On edge, that was.

Was she still operating? She had no idea.

It had dawned on her then. If she was receiving Villanelle treatment, did they expect her to become her? An assassin, that is? Did they know about Raymond?

She wouldn’t do it.

The thought had kept her awake all night.

The next time she had seen them, in the flesh, was four days later. She had felt them around her, following her, watching her, unsurprised when they turned up at her new apartment.

 _“We told you we’d take care of it, Eve”_ Mikael had smirked, and she had glared at them.

 _“I’m not killing anyone, by the way… I don’t do that”_ she had said.

They laughed at her, full-body laughed. She had wondered if they were both simultaneously having seizures or something.

 _“You won’t be required to kill anyone… no worries”_ Mikael had shrugged, as though the conversation was a very ordinary one.

 _“Then… what?”_ she had practically spat at them.

She’d been given clear instructions then to report to their office's first thing the next morning, to meet the rest of the team and to be briefed on exactly what her role was within the operation.

She hadn’t slept a wink again.

With very few wardrobe options, she showed up to the office in an old sweater and a pair of black jeans. The buzzer rang to allow her inside before she’d even pressed it.

“So… Eve… we know you are particularly skilled at finding assassins, no?” Mikael had asked, she furrowed her brows in response. “Or was it Villanelle only?”.

Her whole demeanour changed then. She hadn’t heard the name spoken aloud in two years, it hadn’t even left her own lips.

“I don’t know where she is, I won’t look for her again,” Eve said confidently. Villanelle and any talk of her was off-limits.

Mikael clicked his tongue at her and she could feel her heart racing in her chest.

“Eve… always assuming” he chastised. “We don’t need you to find her” Mikael smirked, his eyes sparkling, he looked as mischievous as any child she had ever seen. “We learned of your… special relationship with Villanelle rather early on in our investigations. She doesn’t like you much, does she?” he asked, and she felt herself becoming defensive.

“I don’t like her, either”.

“Well, that’s good to know” Mikael laughed, and she raised her eyebrows again. “You see… we have a newly recruited field agent… hard to deal with” he started briefly. “We feel your unique experience with female assassins may be what we need to keep her in check”.

Eve swallowed thickly.

Unique experience was an understatement, but it was an experience that wouldn’t ever be replicated with any other person, ever.

“In fact, we know it to be true. The mention of your name and she completely shuts down, very intriguing” Mikael suggested, he sounded amused.

She wasn’t. In fact, she was less amused with every passing second.

She was aware of the faint click of heels downstairs. The office door opened, and she heard an all too familiar voice, particularly sing-song on this occasion.

“Oh, Mikael… I am home… and didn’t I do amazing?” the Russian spoke as she climbed the stairs, it sounded like two at a time. Villanelle sounded like she did when she had misbehaved, Eve remembered all too well.

Her heart felt like it might beat out of her chest. She felt like she might self-combust. Her eyes bore into Mikael who looked back at her similarly, judging her reaction.

Angry, she was angry. She had been set up.

She could smell her before she could see her, walking up behind her and she heard the woman stop with a start.

Mikael’s eyes flitted behind her, and she knew that her most identifying factor – her hair, had given her away.

So badly she wanted to turn around herself to gage the woman’s reaction, equally wanting the ground to swallow her up.

“Don’t do anything stupid, Villanelle” Mikael had said calmly. “Meet your new handler, Eve Polastri,” he said, and Eve had finally turned around.

-

Six months on and she was walking by the vast Prague Congress Centre, headed towards the Metro station. She fished into her purse for her Metro card, pressing it against the contactless barrier and walking down to platform one.

She knew this journey like the back of her hand, the one from Vyšehrad to the office in the city centre. Her quaint apartment wasn’t too close, nor too far away, only 20 minutes on the train.

The overhead display told her that the next train departed towards Letňany in four minutes.

She sat, yawned, stretched her legs and thought about going to Villanelle’s apartment. She’d only been once before, on the weekend when the offices were cleared out and the woman hadn’t answered her phone. It was more than clear that her presence had been an unwelcome one in the woman’s home.

Even though she was Villanelle’s handler, their interaction was almost non-existent and almost entirely conducted in the safety of the office.

You could still cut the tension between them with a knife. They hadn’t spoken about the past, nor the present, both seemingly resigning themselves to the fact that they would have to exist around each other. Neither had accepted it, the anger still palpable, if the sly and not so sly digs were anything to go by.

Eve’s job wasn’t made easy by Villanelle, which she had expected from the very beginning. It was as though she purposely did the opposite of what she was asked, either hoping to get herself or preferably Eve fired. Nothing had worked up to yet.

Lately, Villanelle’s reactions to her had been different. Less ‘I’m so angry, I could kill you’ more ‘I wish you’d just kill yourself’. She wasn’t even worth killing anymore, it felt like. The woman was so unbothered by her.

The feeling was somewhat mutual. Eve no longer cared about whether Villanelle lived or died. In fact, she sometimes wished that Villanelle wouldn’t return from her particularly dangerous missions, figuring then her services would no longer be required.

If she was honest with herself though, she did breathe a sigh of relief when the woman swanned into the office to receive her payment. But it wasn’t because she cared at her, not for a second. It was because she would be jealous if someone else got to be the one to cause the life to drain out of her eyes.

It seemed a waste of time and money. Her position as Villanelle’s handler wasn’t a necessary one. She stopped by the offices and received the brief from Mikael.

She wondered why they couldn’t just cut out the middle man and have Mikael tell Villanelle himself. All she seemed to do was piss off the other woman, rile her up for a mission she was supposed to remain calm and collected for.

She didn’t call ahead, stopping by at Kavárna Pražírna for coffee on the short walk to Villanelle’s apartment.

Interactions with the younger woman usually sucked the life out of her and she knew, without a doubt that she would need caffeine to get her through.

Villanelle’s Parisian apartment and her MI6 issued apartment in London had nothing on her apartment in Prague. A nineteenth-century exterior masked a modern, fresh, luxurious one-bedroom apartment that overlooked the city. Villanelle had a taste for the finer things in life, still, and Eve wondered if she had managed to keep it up before being recruited again. Not that she would ever ask.

She recited the brief in her head on the walk over, making sure she had the details crystal clear. The last thing she needed was to be stumbling over her words in front of Villanelle, it would be all the woman needed to deem her incompetent. 

Not that she cared, _of course_.

Climbing the stairs in Villanelle’s apartment building, she subconsciously stroked her fingers through her hair to combat the effects of the wind, coming to a stop in front of her door and wondering why the hell she hadn’t called ahead.

It was almost 10 pm, and she wondered if the loud music playing inside of the apartment generated noise complaints. Probably, but Villanelle wouldn’t care. She didn’t recognise the song, knocking loudly.

It was no surprise that Villanelle wouldn’t be able to hear over the music, knocking again after a time, louder.

Still nothing.

Louder again, before reaching into her purse to retrieve her phone.

 _‘Nothing is ever easy with you, Villanelle… is it?’_ she thought to herself.

She was just about to dial the unsaved number, having scrolled back in her call history to locate it when the door suddenly opened, and a dishevelled Villanelle came into sight. It shocked her, and she took a step back from the door.

Villanelle looked strange. Eve tried not to look down at her body, or her at all really but she couldn’t miss the lipstick stains smeared across the woman’s mouth.

She gulped.

“It’s rude not to call ahead, _Eve_ ” Villanelle said, and her tone was accusatory. She cocked an eyebrow at Eve, tightening the robe around her waist as she took a step away from the door, holding it open with her foot. A silent invitation, Eve thought.

It wasn’t, she quickly learned when Villanelle clicked her tongue at her. “I don’t remember inviting you in _Eve,_ ” the woman said, reaching out to hold the door frame, essentially blocking her entrance. It closed the distance between them and Eve, shocked, took a step back.

“Duty calls,” she said, stopping herself from saying that she was sorry for interrupting because she wasn’t. She wasn’t jealous, but she also didn’t mind ruining Villanelle’s fun. The woman had ruined her life after all.

Villanelle huffed, like a child not getting her own way and made her way back into the apartment. Eve followed before the door closed shut on her.

She stood out in the hallway and watched Villanelle enter her bedroom and swiftly close the door behind her. She could hear talking but it was faint over the loud music and they were whispering in a language she didn’t understand.

Villanelle reemerged, still dressed in the robe. Her guest was a tall, beautiful, dark-skinned woman. Her hand was intertwined with Villanelle’s. Eve didn’t look up to meet her eyes.

They passed her, and she heard them kissing again, giggling, flirting in Czech and she wished that she knew what they were saying. She didn’t turn around.

“How can I help you, _Eve_?” Villanelle asked behind her after the door had clicked shut. She turned to look at her, ignoring the lipstick around her mouth.

She looked flushed, as though Eve really had caught her at a bad time, or a good time, depending on how you looked at it.

The younger woman was obviously annoyed by her presence. Long gone were the days when she was the object of Villanelle’s affections. When Villanelle would tease, flirt with, intimidate her. Eve sometimes thought that she must have imagined it all, for this Villanelle standing in front of her was a completely different person.

She didn’t want Villanelle like that, she told herself that she never had.

She cleared her throat.

“You’re going to Budapest… I um, Mikael seems to think that Giovanni Romano is hiding out there and well… he wants you to um… well um… eliminate him” she explained, badly.

So much for not stuttering.

“You do it,” Villanelle said, completely offhandedly and Eve swallowed the lump in her throat.

No one else in the office knew of her part to play in Raymond’s murder. It had been pinned on Villanelle without question, and she wondered why the woman hadn’t denied it.

This wasn’t the first time that Villanelle had alluded to it, but it caught her off guard none the less.

“I… um… that’s not my job” she said simply, handing over the brief and the plane ticket to Villanelle. She wouldn’t stay, they didn’t chat, not ever.

She didn’t look up to meet Villanelle’s eyes, couldn’t now that she had been put in her place. She had absolutely no authority here, they both knew it, but usually, she could play the part.

Not right now, apparently.

The energy between them was palpable, wholly negative. “I should suggest to Mikael that I handle you… God knows I’d be better at it.” Villanelle laughed, but it wasn’t friendly. “But I’d be bored… and even though _we’re the same_ … I’m better at what we do” Villanelle said, and Eve could feel her smirk.

She hated the way that Villanelle emphasized their apparent similarities.

“I’m sensational” she finished, and Eve dared look up. The grin on her face was menacing, and she wished that Villanelle would finish her off then and there.

“I’m not like you Villanelle,” she said, glaring at the younger woman. “I fucking _hate_ you”.

Villanelle was delighted by that, apparently. “Doesn’t change the facts, Eve” she said before mumbling under her breath “ _murderer_ ”. It was teasing, Villanelle wanted a reaction.

Before she knew what she was doing, her arm lifted, her fist swiping across Villanelle’s jaw.

“Fuck you” she uttered, watching how unaffected Villanelle seemed by the punch. No dramatic head turning to the side like in the movies, she hadn’t shied away from the swing of her fist. Instead, the only tell-tale sign that she had been hit was the small gasp that left her lips and the swelling on her jaw.

“Wow,” the young woman said, a smile on her face. “Always so violent, _Eve_ … you can’t help yourself”.

Eve growled, her other fist flying up and attempting to hit her other cheek. Villanelle’s reflexes were better that time and she blocked it, long fingers wrapping around her wrist.

“Don’t, Eve… I’m not feeling patient… you just interrupted at a _very_ crucial moment” Villanelle warned, and Eve pushed against her, pulling her wrist free.

“I don’t fucking care, kill me then” she shouted at the woman, seeing the darkness in Villanelle’s eyes.

This had escalated quickly.

She saw Villanelle consider it for a second, and it caught her off guard when the woman reached out and wrapped her fingers around her neck, pushing her up against the wall.

Finally.

“Fucking do it,” Eve said, feeling the fingers tighten around her neck, feeling herself having to struggle for breath.

Villanelle looked like she had when Raymond had been choking her. Feral. Angry. Numb.

The fingers loosened their grip around her neck and she realised that she had been unable to breathe beforehand.

Her legs almost gave out and she held herself up, gasping for air.

She was disappointed.

“You’re not worth it,” Villanelle said, and Eve knew then that she was being punished. Villanelle knew, somehow, that the worst punishment for Eve was to let her live.

Tears burned in Eve’s eyes, both from the choking and for the fact that it had come so close to being over.

Villanelle took a step back and lifted the brief to read it.

“You leave tonight, don’t fuck it up, he said,” Eve told her, pushing herself off of the wall.

She left without another word, and she cried the whole way home.


	2. Budapest

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for all of the comments. This chapter was mostly written already and they really motivated me to get it finished and posted today. Eve is really fighting with herself in this chapter. The only Villaneve interaction in this chapter is a flashback, but I promise that there is more to come, I'm just getting started! Enjoy.
> 
> (also, very sorry for the lack of knowledge about Budapest, I hope it isn't too obvious).

Eve was perplexed that during the drab day-to-day of MI5 and the hours and hours of investigative work she had done at MI6, she had never, in great detail, considered the role of handlers in the process of ordering kills and orchestrating assassinations. She figured that her approach was probably quite unconventional, but she hadn’t been given much direction.

Naively, she had thought initially that she would be required to travel with Villanelle, and that had been her biggest argument against the whole thing. Not the only argument, but certainly the biggest which should have been concerning to her. It apparently didn’t bother her that she was practically an accomplice to murder these days. She was the one that sent Villanelle out on missions, under instruction from Mikael.

She wondered if Konstantin had used to travel around with Villanelle, or whether it was just a coincidence that they were often in the same place at the same time. She wondered too if they kept in contact, and why he hadn’t been considered for the position.

Mikael had assured her that her work wouldn’t require her to leave the city, as though it was some kind of job proposal, as though she did have a choice. She didn’t, and that had been made very clear from the beginning, and even more so when she and Villanelle had been reunited.

-

_Eve had taken her in. She felt hot, like her legs might give out from underneath her. She hadn’t expected it, and certainly not today, not after so long._

_She had had strong suspicions that Villanelle would be involved in this somehow, down the line. She thought she might be required to investigate her, locate her, pull her out of hiding. She would have agreed, but she wouldn’t have gone through with it, wouldn’t have taken the work seriously. She didn’t even have the capabilities to locate someone without a team behind her, without Kenny._

_She had worked on a hunch with Villanelle. She had never been so successful at her job. It was because she wanted to know the answers. She had them now, there was no incentive._

_But there she was, face to face with the woman. She was sure their expressions mirrored each other._

_Eve watched as Villanelle took a long breath in through her nose. At least one of them was still able to breathe. Eve had held her breath since the second she’d laid eyes on her. Waiting._

_“This… is how you plan to control me?” Villanelle asked, eyes looking away and staring down Mikael. “Her?” she asked, her anger masked by humour. A defence mechanism? Manipulation? Eve had no idea, she didn’t know her anymore._

_“We think that Eve’s… unique set of skills will be most beneficial to our investigation, and yes we think she might be able to help us with you. Villanelle, you must stop being so naughty, you must realise how serious this is” Mikael said, speaking to Villanelle as though she was a child._

_Villanelle cocked her head to the side. A silent question. An ‘are you being serious?’._

_“So, I can be a little naughty?” she asked Mikael after a beat, teasing him._

_Eve finally took a gasping breath when Villanelle took a step closer to her, sizing her up._

_“You’re alive then? I had better work on my aim” Villanelle deadpanned, circling her once at a reasonable distance._

_Eve didn’t move, but when she was face to face with her again, she managed a “fuck you”._

_Maybe once that would have amused Villanelle, but it was clear she hadn’t come to play. She was angry, but so was Eve. She wondered who would strike first because it was only a matter of time._

_Of course, it was Villanelle and she did so without another word. She lunged at Eve, and before she could find her footing and hit back, her back hit the floor. Villanelle didn’t fall with her, but she did crouch down and press a knife against her throat._

_She had a look in her eyes, a look Eve hadn’t seen before._

_She said nothing, but her leg lifted from the floor, ignoring the twinge of pain in her hip to kick up between her legs._

_A moan left Villanelle’s lips, and she stumbled so that the knife pressed more insistently against her skin._

_She didn’t even register Mikael’s protests until he lifted Villanelle from the ground by her hair, fistfuls of long, blonde locks in one hand, his other twisting her wrist in a way that forced Villanelle to drop the knife._

_She cried out in pain but fought against him, her elbow pushing back until it collided with his nose._

_It was a mad scramble between them then for the knife. A knife, when Eve knew that Villanelle could kill her in one hundred different ways._

_She didn’t know what she wanted more, to kill the woman or be killed by her._

_She won, scrambling to her feet, wielding the knife. She could do it if she got close enough._

_She ran at the younger woman, knife raised above her head. She’d go for the neck, she thought, but Villanelle blocked it, the blade sliding across her palm instead. Villanelle cried out, retreated, looked at her._

_She looked at her and Eve almost felt guilty. Her whole demeanour had changed in a second._

_“You’ll never tire of hurting me, will you Eve?” Villanelle asked, and it made anger bubble in her chest._

_How could she play the victim? This master manipulator, in the past, had managed to appeal to Eve’s marginally better nature, she’d managed to convince Eve, somehow, that she was a good person, despite everyone’s warnings, and she had felt bad for her._

_Not anymore._

_She scoffed, shaking her head. “What’s her name?” she asked curiously, Villanelle cocked an eyebrow at her, eyes flitting from hers down to her palm, inspecting it._

_Eve held the handle of the knife tighter._

_“What character are you playing now, Villanelle?” Eve took her time saying the woman’s name. Remembering all the other times she had said it, realising how different it felt this time._

_Villanelle looked at her curiously and said nothing._

_“I don’t buy it, not for a second,” she told her, hissing when Villanelle’s bloody palm collided with her cheek, her blood splattered across her face now._

_She’d lost everything, and Villanelle hadn’t lost anything._

_The woman left without another word, Eve watching her, jaw clenched as she went, dropping the bloody knife against Mikael’s desk._

_“This isn’t a good idea” she warned._

_Mikael, holding his bloody nose, smirked. “You just demonstrated exactly why you are perfect for the job”._

-

The first time that she had sent Villanelle out on a mission, it had been to Geneva, Switzerland. The woman had stalked into the office, lifted the brief from the desk and left without a word. They hadn’t spoken in three weeks, since the fight.

Eve hadn’t expected for Villanelle to keep in touch, keep them up to date with how things were going, so it came as no surprise when no one heard from her.

She didn’t worry about her, knowing that she was more than capable of looking after herself, doubting that there was anyone more dangerous than her.

Four days later, Villanelle had shown up at the office, spoken with Mikael in German, collected her payment and left without so much as a glance in her direction.

As the months progressed, the young woman became more problematic on missions, making silly, amateur mistakes on purpose. She was bored, Eve thought.

Still, she took it on the chin, not caring how difficult Villanelle tried to make her job.

This time, they were on day eight without a word from Villanelle.

She’d called twice, but she’d left no voicemails, no messages, no concern.

Mikael was out of his mind with worry by now, afraid of losing his most efficient operative no doubt, calling and texting her every hour of every day.

Eve’s thinking was that this was what Villanelle wanted, a fuss, the attention. If she was dead, then she can’t have been that efficient after all.

By day ten, Mikael thrust plane tickets at her when she arrived in the office, and various forms of identification that used her photograph, but weren’t _her_.

“No” She wasn’t dumb, she knew what this was.

“Yes,” Mikael had replied. “I’m concerned for her well-being, do your job” he had told her.

She rolled her eyes at that but considered it for a moment. She could always go, get out of the city, out of the country even, get lost for a while.

Of course, she wouldn’t look for Villanelle. She had steeled herself since the fight in Villanelle’s apartment almost two weeks ago. Ultimately, one would lead to the demise of the other, it was only a matter of time. But she had to be stronger. She couldn’t let her win again.

With a nod of her head, she returned home and packed a small bag, taking the Metro back towards Letňany, changing over at Hlavní Nádraží to take her to the airport. She was there and on her flight within three hours.

She had been slightly anxious about her fake documentation but breezed through security without a hitch.

She didn’t think much about Villanelle on the flight and instead thought about what fun things she might be able to do in Budapest.

The flight was only an hour, and upon landing, she hailed a cab and instructed the driver to take her to the hotel that Mikael had booked for her. It was the same one that Villanelle had been booked into, she recalled but doubted that she had stuck around after her three paid nights were up.

She checked in and headed up to her room, letting out a sigh as she laid on the huge bed, allowing herself to think of Villanelle only when she turned her head to look out of the window that overlooked the city. She was out there somewhere, misbehaving, Eve was sure of it.

After a nap, it was mid-afternoon when she took herself off for lunch and coffee. She perused independent boutiques. She spent money, treated herself to clothes that she liked that Villanelle would hate. She hadn’t done this in God knows how long. She felt free as a bird, but really, her cage had just gotten a little bigger.

She wasted the day, exploring, ignoring the incessant phone calls and text messages from Mikael. He should have known that if he wanted to find Villanelle, then he should have come himself and even then, he would only find her if she wanted to be found.

Eve looked at it like it was a vacation. A celebration of sorts. Villanelle _might_ be dead.

There was an irritating, underlying, nagging concern for the woman. What if she was alive and in trouble? It stemmed from their history, she told herself. There was so much history there between them, and apparently, those niggling feelings took some time to go away.

But Villanelle could take care of herself, unless she couldn’t in which case Eve was likely too late anyway.

She thought then, about Mikael having sent her to locate Villanelle. She dropped her bags down onto the bed and dropped herself down into the loveseat. Effectively, if he thought Villanelle was in some kind of trouble, he had sent Eve into the lion’s den. How did he expect her to get Villanelle out of it? He surely didn’t expect her to sacrifice herself, once again.

Shrugging, she had no intention of looking for her anyway, drafting a text message to Mikael, ignoring the ones he had sent to her.

 **Eve [19:58]:** How do I turn on my out of office??

She laughed at herself and got up out of the seat, switching off her phone in lieu of an out of office email, pulling all of her new clothes out of their bags and admiring them.

She could go out, if she wanted to, to a club or a bar or a restaurant. She could stay in and watch a movie and order room service. _Free as a bird._

She took a long, hot shower and re-emerged from the bathroom with a towel atop her head, another wrapped around her body. She’d nicked her leg whilst shaving and sat on the bed, tissue pressed against the cut as she watched TV. She hastily wrapped the hotel issued robe around her petite frame when her room service arrived, thanking the employee graciously and tucking into her pizza, sipping on her champagne. It was expensive, this was luxury to her.

She thought about what the repercussions may be if she returned to London instead of returning to Prague. Sure, they would locate her and probably drag her back kicking and screaming, but would the consequences be worth the effort. She missed her home. She’d hated it whilst she lived there but thought that it was reminiscent of ‘you don’t know what you have until it’s gone’. She missed her drab life at MI5 and wondered how different her life would be now if she hadn’t said that off-handed comment in a meeting with Carolyn Martens.

Did she regret it? Maybe, yes.

She decided that she would go out and dressed up in a navy-blue dress. The cut was low and required her to go braless. She felt confident in it, but not quite sexy. Being comfortable made her feel the most confident. She fluffed her curls in her hands and smiled at herself in the mirror.

The hotel was situated in the city centre and so a quick walk from the hotel led her to a seemingly trendy basement bar. Checking on her lipstick in her pocket mirror, she entered the establishment and headed towards the bar, flagging down the waiter and ordering a gin and tonic. She took in her surroundings and was shocked to notice that the music played quietly, and the chatter of people not too different in age than her mostly filled the space. She was used to feeling old in bars and clubs now, but it wasn’t the case here. She blended right in.

Good.

She sipped on her drink and leant against the bar, taking it all in. She had never had this, never been completely alone. She pondered that thought for a moment, realising that she had been married for 15 years, and then somehow bound to Villanelle, mind, body and soul ever since.

It annoyed her. But things were different now.

She felt a presence beside her and looked to the side, looking up into the eyes of a man that looked down at her. He must have been 6’2”, with short, dark hair and a moustache that reminded her of Niko’s. In fact, he looked a lot like Niko had maybe five, ten years ago.

She smiled at him, he smiled back.

“Vehetek neked egy italt?” he asked, she raised her eyebrows.

“Oh, sorry… I um, I speak English” she said to him, glad that she didn’t have to shout over loud music.

“I asked if I could buy you a drink?” a laugh left his lips and she was transported back in time. It knocked her back for a second, surprised her. She hadn’t thought about her ex-husband in such a long time. Things really had been good between them, before Villanelle came along and screwed things up.

“Um… yes, please, thank you” Eve smiled politely and looked ahead, nervous.

“You… want to join me and my friends?” he offered to her, gesturing to a table at the back of the bar. Her eyes followed his direction and she smiled, nodding in agreement.

“I’m um, I’m Eve, by the way” she explained as she followed after him.

“I’m Andor” he replied, before introducing her to the group.

She enjoyed herself, in the company of a man that reminded her of her former lover. The one who had loved her too, before he knew who she really was. His friends reminded her of her own before she had let them down one too many times in order to chase down a wild, beautiful, sensational assassin, who had completely turned her world upside down.

It was nice to be _that_ Eve, again. The one that was normal.

She allowed Andor to walk her back to her hotel at the end of the evening and when he leaned in to press his lips to hers, she didn’t stop him. 

When she pulled back from the kiss, she licked her lips and smiled up at him. “Thank you for a lovely evening,” she said, taking another step back. He did the same and offered her a polite nod.

She left him at the entrance and took the elevator back to her hotel room, stripping out of her dress and climbing beneath the sheets. She thought about how good it felt, to break the chains, but couldn’t help but wonder what had prevented her from asking him up to her room.

She slept soundly that night, and she dreamt of Niko.

-

When she woke the next morning, for the briefest of moments she was back in the London townhouse and Niko was snoring beside her. She rolled over and opened her eyes, the bed empty. Sighing, she nuzzled her face into the pillow.

She turned her phone back on and swiped up to all of the texts and calls that came through from Mikael, dismissing them in favour of googling ‘fun things to do in Budapest’.

She decided to pay a visit to Gellért Baths for a spa day. She’d been on one once before with Niko’s mom, making good on a gift voucher that had been given to her and Niko one Christmas. It had been rather awkward, they hadn’t ever really been the best of friends. She figured it wouldn’t hurt to distance herself from the hotel for the day, in case Mikael or anyone else from The Four showed up to track her down, and she needed some R&R.

She stopped by in town and picked up a swimsuit, heading to the spa and booking herself in for some treatments. She changed in the changing room and ordered herself a glass of champagne at reception, sitting beside the baths as she drank it. It was deadly silent, except for the movement of water, and it was rather boring.

She knew she’d messed up when she had sat there in the silence for a few minutes. She’d always had a busy mind and right now it was going into overdrive.

What if something really had happened to Villanelle?

She was called in for her full body massage, and it was enough to distract her for a brief moment as she followed after the masseuse and undressed, laying down beneath the towel.

Once again, her mind ran wild.

She had thought that Villanelle was doing this to be an inconvenience. She was probably bored, so she would go radio silent, knowing that Eve would be dispatched to track her down. Then she’d watch her, fuck with her, and when she’d had her fun, she’d kill her.

So, where was she?

It was unnerving, and the feeling worsened with every passing second.

She knew that she shouldn’t be concerned about Villanelle anymore and it angered her that she was. The woman had always seemed unbeatable to her though, and the more she considered everything, the more it seemed out of character for Villanelle.

Not unusual that she would go off and break the rules, but unusual that she would keep quiet about it.

“I’m sorry… I have to go” she turned to the masseuse mid-massage, waiting for her to step out of the room to slip back into her robe, heading off to the changing room.

She pulled her phone out of the locker and opened up her text chat with Villanelle. It was empty.

 **Eve [12:17]:** Are you alive?

She figured that maybe Villanelle might give in to that. Finally, Eve had reached out properly to check on her. She stared at the chat, expecting the three dots to appear, her frown lines deepening with every second that passed when they didn’t.

She redressed in a hurry and tied up her hair, throwing on her coat and dialling Mikael’s number as soon as she walked out onto the street, heading in the direction of the hotel.

It rang and rang and rang and-

“Mikael, before you say anything… what name did Villanelle check-in under?” she doubted very much that Villanelle was still there, but it was certainly worth a try.

“Andrea Veselý” Mikael replied “Eve, I hope you’re taking this seriously… we need Villanelle, I’m concerned that The Twelve may have learned of her whereabouts” he explained, and she nodded, as though he could see her.

“I know… I’m working on it, I’ll ask at the hotel reception and call you back once I know more… I- have you tried to trace her phone somehow, I don’t know?” Eve wished at that moment that she had paid closer to Kenny and his work during her time at MI6.

“Burner phones are untraceable, Eve” Mikael spoke like she was the dumbest person he’d spoken to in his life.

“I didn’t know! I’ll call you when I know more” she hurried, crossing the street and hanging up the call. Something made her stop in her tracks, thinking for a moment that it was entirely possible that Villanelle was watching her and laughing right now.

She wasn’t.

She made her way up to the front desk and cleared her throat. “Um, hi… I was wondering if Andrea Veselý was still staying here? She’s um… she’s my friend” Eve explained, not sounding convincing at all, as she could tell by the look on the receptionist’s face.

“I… can check that for you” the woman smiled politely, checking over the system. Eve waited impatiently, tapping her fingers against the desk. “I’m afraid not… she stayed for one night only, on the 7th” the woman explained, looking at her with suspicion. The 7th was two weeks ago now.

“Oh… okay, must have got our wires crossed then” Eve chuckled, trying to sound light but she felt heavy, pulling her phone out of her pocket to call Mikael again.

“She checked out after one night Mikael, I don’t know where I’m supposed to look” she admitted. “We don’t even have word that she killed Romano, what if she’s in trouble?” Eve rushed out, pacing up and down the lobby.

Mikael groaned at the other end. “I have been trying to tell you this, Polastri. It isn’t like Villanelle” he spoke to her as though she was a child that didn’t quite grasp the severity of the situation. Granted, she hadn’t until now.

“Now isn’t time for a lecture-“ she started, looking up when the elevator door pinged open in front of her, a crowd of people pouring out around her. She entered after they left and pressed the button for her floor. “-I don’t know where she might be, have you traced her passport?” Eve thought.

“Yes, of course, she hasn’t left the country, apparently,” Mikael said. “I’m relying on you Eve, we have to find her and return her to Prague… jobs are backing up you know, we need her in the team” Mikael said.

Eve rolled her eyes at that, letting herself into her room. “I understand Mikael, but there are other assassins if needs must” she tried to rationalise. Getting Villanelle back to work wasn’t her primary concern, she hated that she had concern for her at all, but it was so uncharacteristic that Eve just had to know for sure. She needed to know if Villanelle was dead or alive, but she told herself that she didn’t mind either way.

She pulled open her laptop and researched local establishments that she thought that Villanelle might frequent. She made lists of local car rental companies to check whether she had hired a car at any point, using her documentation, although it was entirely possible that she had just stolen a car and taken off. She looked for ways in which Villanelle might have left the country without scanning her passport, coming up empty and hitting her head back against the headboard.

She was doing it again.

Chasing.


	3. Kitzbuhel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, thank you for the comments, they are very encouraging! It took me a little more time to put this one together, but I hope you enjoy it!

As per the Schengen Agreement, Eve learned that it was entirely possible that Villanelle could have left Hungary for almost any other European country by automobile without any kind of border control. That widened their search area to 4,312,099 square kilometres, with Villanelle being one of over 400 million people occupying the area. To say that they were looking for a needle in a haystack was an understatement.

The more time that passed, the more Eve was sure that she was evading them to be an inconvenience, rather than she had found herself in a sticky situation, and so her concern for the woman dissipated and translated back to anger.

“Mikael, can’t you see this is what she wants… I don’t know what you expect me to do, she could be anywhere” she argued over the phone, tugging on her curls out of frustration.

“If you’re suggesting she left by car, Eve, then she must have hired one, or stolen one, there must be some kind of trail” Mikael was insistent that Eve continue with the search and that only fuelled her frustration.

“What’s so special about her, why is all of this necessary? I thought we were supposed to be finding the rest of The Twelve, why are we worrying so much about a field agent that’s gone rogue?” Eve questioned, believing that would stump Mikael, finally, and she’d be able to return back to the office.

“The entire operation is compromised with her unaccounted for, Eve… they could be torturing her for all we know. If they know about the operation, then we’re all dead” Mikael tried to reason, and Eve could only laugh.

“That’s not how she works, for one. She would rather die than give up the ones paying for her shoes and designer clothes” she started. “Secondly, if that were the case… then we’re far too late, don’t you think?” another chuckle left her lips when she finished, just in complete disbelief at the disorganisation of her employers.

She hung up on him then and ignored his attempts to reach her again. All she could do was communicate with the small tech taskforce back in Prague to see if they could access police records for stolen vehicles in the area around the time that Villanelle went MIA.

Eve showered and thought over her plan for the day. She hadn’t made much progress with the car hire companies over the phone, really having no idea if Villanelle would have gone by Andrea as she had at the hotel and finding the language barrier hard to overcome over the phone.

So, she went to them, one by one, armed with a photograph of Villanelle. There were twenty in the city alone, and she couldn’t bear to think about how many there might be in the country.

“Hi,” she said, stepping up to the receptionist of the first establishment. This was risky business to their otherwise covert operation. There was every possibility that people may become suspicious and alert the police about the supposed missing person, so she had to tread carefully. “I was hoping that you could help me… I’m looking for my friend” she tried to explain, the woman looking at her was already concerned. “I was supposed to meet her in the city, but I’ve not been able to get a hold of her, she mentioned about travelling around a little and I wondered if she might have hired a vehicle from you guys?” she asked, trying to sound convincing, a reassuring smile on her face so as not to cause any panic.

She extended the photograph towards the woman who inspected it closely, shaking her head. “No… I have not seen her face before, I would remember her face” she assured Eve.

Eve had already had enough, the last thing they needed was for people to be remembering Villanelle’s face. “Do you work often, is there anyone else that might have seen her?” she asked, watching as the receptionist called over another woman, speaking in their mother tongue to one another, both looking at the picture again and offering a sympathetic shake of their heads.

She went around to other establishments and recounted the same story, only taking a break when she was given a lead from the team back in Prague. It seemed that a Porsche had been stolen from close to the hotel that they were both staying in on the day that Villanelle had checked out of the hotel. It had later been recovered in Kitzbuhel, Austria, wiped clean and abandoned in a ditch.

“Is there any CCTV?” Eve asked Katya over the phone. “I don’t know… entering Austria? Close to where the car was dumped? I’m not going to Austria unless we’re sure she’s there” she told them, knowing that Mikael was definitely listening in on the conversation, hearing him mumbling about her unprofessionalism in the background.

It wasn’t unprofessional, just efficient. They’d made too many mistakes with targets over the past six months, and that was because they had been acting on a whim, she wasn’t going to do that with Villanelle.

“Look for… um, murders, around the local area… it’s been two weeks without for Villanelle, that is assuming she successfully completed the mission” she reminded them, carelessly adding “she will be bored”.

Jerome piped up then “no murders, by the looks of things… Katya and I will look into CCTV” he told her, and she was surprised. Jerome was another assassin utilised by The Four, and like Villanelle, he rarely got involved in the day-to-day investigative work. Mikael was really pulling out the stops.

“Good luck,” she said, hanging up the phone and deciding to head back to the hotel. She had been working for all of the morning and most of the afternoon and hadn’t eaten a single thing all day.

On her walk back, a woman ahead of her caught her eye. She carried a variety of designer bags – Chanel, Prada, Louis Vuitton, Gucci. A leather jacket hung on her shoulders, honey blonde hair cascading down her back. It couldn’t be, could it? Except the similarities were uncanny. The height, the walk (more like strut), the less-than-quiet confidence. This woman was sure of herself, much like Villanelle. She trailed her and smirked when the woman approached her hotel, the same hotel that she had been staying in since her arrival in Budapest. It was almost too good to be true. She walked in and approached the elevator and Eve sped up, a smirk on her face. She’d done it again. Her hand slammed against the elevator door to hold it open and the woman turned around quickly, almost as if Eve had made her jump.

“Vill-“ she started, taking in the woman’s face and frowning. She didn’t step into the elevator but pushed the button on the wall to hold open the door as she took her in. “oh” she mumbled, watching the woman’s confused face. “I… I’m sorry, I thought you were someone else” she explained, taking a step back and watching the doors close, the woman still offering her a curious look.

She was almost in shock, her legs carrying her up the stairs to her room on autopilot. She felt like she was losing her mind. She’d succumbed to her old life totally and completely, and without even realising.

Sitting down on her bed, she laid back against the pillows and let out a sigh. She just needed five minutes of calm.

She inhaled deeply through her nose, and out through her mouth, trying to allow the calm to wash over her, but as always, something concerning Villanelle interrupted her quiet, her phone ringing again with news from the office in Prague.

“We think we may have positively identified Villanelle as the woman driving the stolen car, but it appears she wasn’t alone… we’ve sent the images across to you for a positive ID” Katya informed her. She was quick, not as quick as Kenny, but quick all the same. She was tired though, letting out a sigh as she loaded up her laptop, signing into her email and looking over the images.

It was her, without a doubt. Only the lower half of her face was visible in the images, but she wouldn’t make the mistake of misidentifying her twice. “Yes, that’s her,” she said into the phone, turning her attention to the passenger. “I… can’t make out the passenger in the photographs, they are out of view,” she said. “It certainly doesn’t look like it is Romano, though” she observed, curious as to why Villanelle would be travelling with anyone else.

“This is thirteen days ago, Eve… we need you to travel to Kitzbuhel this evening, it's very possible that she has moved on already” Mikael told her, as though that wouldn’t be obvious to her.

She wanted to argue, she was tired, but curiosity killed the cat, and it still wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that Villanelle was in trouble or had gone rogue and was working for the other side once again. Perhaps a bigger paycheck was all that was necessary to get the woman to switch sides.

“Okay,” she said, and she hung up the phone.

-

After she had packed up her belongings and checked out of the hotel, she hailed a cab and directed them to the next car hire place on her list. She didn’t want to return to one of the previous places and leave a trail.

Again, she grew nervous about using her false identification, but it all went through without a hitch and she was handed the keys to a Toyota Prius. She tried to be patient with the sales assistant that talked her through the car’s controls, but she had driven before and grew antsy quickly, wanting to head out on the road and get things cleared up so that she could head back to Prague.

She was sick of allowing Villanelle to dictate her every move, she’d once vowed never to let it be the case again.

Sliding into the car, she opened up a message from Mikael to reveal the address of the hotel that he had booked her into, sighing when she saw that she had a six and a half-hour drive ahead of her.

Things would never be easy with this woman.

-

She hadn’t driven since she lived in London, and it surprised her that she had to make a conscious effort to remember to drive on the opposite side of the road. It felt foreign, and like a lifetime ago that she had driven on this side of the road in the US. A brief thought affirmed that it had in fact been over 20 years.

She settled into it after a couple of hours, and the honking of horns lessened as she grew in confidence and got her bearings.

Before reaching the border, she pulled over for gas and to use the restroom and checked in with Mikael to provide an ETA. The team was anxiously waiting at the office as though she would arrive in the Austrian town to find Villanelle lit up like a Christmas tree screaming ‘here I am, look at me’ – Eve was less optimistic.

She didn’t understand the change in demeanour by Villanelle – the lack of kills, the lack of flamboyancy, it was as though she wanted to fly under the radar. It was distinctly out of character.

She almost missed the sign that welcomed her into Austria, surprised by the fact that there really was no border control whatsoever. If this was the case for the whole of Europe, then the likelihood of finding Villanelle unless she wanted to be found seemed slim to none.

She drove close by Vienna and thought about how she might like to visit the city for real one day. She wondered why Villanelle, who liked to get lost in big cities, had ended her journey with that car in a tiny town on the other side of the country. Was she trying to get somewhere in particular?

Was she really going to find anything?

Mostly she drove through quaint, obviously European towns with ridiculously low-speed limits and it felt as though she might never reach her destination.

It felt gratifying to watch the hours pass, and the kilometres until she would reach her final destination dwindle until there was less than one hundred to go.

It took her by surprise when she drove by Salzburg into Germany, driving by the beautiful Berchtesgaden National Park and crossing back into Austria. It was snowing and mountainous and didn’t seem at all like the kind of place Villanelle might want to spend her time. Why was she here? Or why had she been here? It seemed impossible that she would have any business in the tiny town.

It was obviously a ski town, cable cars and ski slopes visible even in the dark, the snow coming down thick and fast as she slowed down the car and manoeuvred her way through the mountains towards her hotel. It wasn’t until she arrived that she realised why Villanelle might choose to spend time here – it was luxurious, that was for sure.

She parked up outside of the hotel and breathed a sigh of relief – grateful for her upbringing in Connecticut for preparing her for driving in such tough, wintery conditions.

She headed in with her luggage, feeling a buzz at knowing that this was absolutely somewhere that Villanelle would choose to stay herself, chancing it and showing the picture of the younger woman to the receptionist, just in case. Risky, in the small town, but she was impatient. Another sympathetic shake of the head told her that Villanelle wasn’t at this hotel at least, and so she ordered some food up to her room and headed up in the elevator.

She ran a bath in the large tub and pulled out her phone to take some pictures whilst she stood out on the balcony. It was beautiful, without a doubt.

When she stepped back inside, she took in the room properly for the first time and had a moment in which she wondered how her life had come to this. Staying in fancy hotels whilst she stalked her enemy around Europe. It was laughable.

She was in the bath when her room service arrived, and she shouted for them to come on in, shouting an apology right away for being so indecent and not being ready to receive it. She was tired though and needed some downtime – it wasn’t like she could really achieve anything this late at night anyway.

She heard the door click closed again and laid back against the tub, her mind drifting to the fact that she really hadn’t been being careful at all on this trip. She’d been using the same identification, walking around as though she didn’t have a care in the world, all whilst knowing that she was wanted by The Twelve. She frowned at the thought, realising that once again, she was subconsciously placed Villanelle on a pedestal, above her morals, values and worst of all – her own safety.

She pushed herself up out of the bathtub after she had tried to talk some sense into herself, telling herself that she wouldn’t continue on after Austria. She wasn’t going to give Villanelle the satisfaction of being chased around the globe again. She’d made that mistake before and ended up with a bullet in her side.

She tucked into chicken alfredo in her bed and didn’t even open her laptop to research the town in which she was staying, didn’t even try to reveal some clues as to where Villanelle might be if, in fact, she was here at all.

Instead, she ate and then retired for the evening, falling soundly asleep atop the crisp hotel sheets.

-

When she woke the next morning, it was almost lunchtime. She was surprised that the sun hadn’t disturbed her slumber, but she felt herself smile at how it beamed down on the snow-covered mountain tops.

It was pretty.

She thought about the possibility that Villanelle could be enjoying the same view that late morning, it seemed unlikely.

She had missed lunch and so she got up and got herself ready. She figured she’d familiarize herself with the town somehow, wanting to get her bearings and figure out her plan from here on out. She drove down into town and parked up on the high street, walking along until she found a small bakery that offered free WiFi.

She stepped inside, the bell ringing and she smiled politely at the woman behind the counter. “Hello” she greeted, adjusting her handbag as she looked over the delicious cakes and other sweet treats on offer. “A latte, please…” she started, looking over the food and asking for a cheese and tomato panini as well as a slice of their delicious-looking carrot cake, with smooth buttercream on top and a fondant carrot that made it look almost too good to eat.

She took a seat in the corner and loaded up her laptop, checking her phone and typing out a quick message to Mikael that she was up and beginning her on-the-ground investigation. She didn’t even know where to begin really. It was entirely possible that she had long since left for Germany or France, technically she could be halfway across the world by now in the time that it had taken Eve to reach her last known location – she was almost two weeks ahead of them.

She smiled graciously when the woman put her food and coffee down beside her, taking a much-needed sip of coffee as she researched designer clothes stores and such nearby, making lists of things that she would have to follow up. She ate slowly, working as she went and was pleased to have made considerable progress within a couple of hours. Technically she was no closer to actually finding Villanelle, but she had things she could look into.

People came and went through the bakery, mostly skiers who were grabbing coffee or homemade hot chocolate to chase away the cold.

Her head shot up in curiosity each time that someone entered, smiling at the friendly Europeans that walked in and out and chatted animatedly with one another.

Eventually, she tuned out the ding of the bell, and focused on the task at hand, her focus only disturbed by an all too familiar Russian drawl requesting an iced coffee and an Americano. It stood out to her for two reasons, really – she knew that voice and only the person to whom the voice belonged would order iced coffee when it was near freezing outside.

She looked up from her laptop and wanted to laugh, wanted to scream. She was too shocked to do either, as leaning up against the counter was none other than Villanelle.

-

It was clear that the woman hadn’t registered her presence. She was totally relaxed, dressed in a snowsuit, and snow boots. Eve narrowed her eyes.

It couldn’t be this easy. It was almost like Villanelle had found her, and therefore denied Eve her ‘aha’ moment – the moments that had been most gratifying to her in the past.

It was intentional, she then thought.

More torture, more games, more making her life a living hell, and yet Villanelle didn’t cast a glance in her direction even once.

Eve watched her, watched how relaxed she seemed, and she didn’t know if she’d ever seen that in Villanelle before.

She waited for her coffees, immediately taking a sip of the iced coffee and nodding in approval, not extending even a ‘thanks’ to the kind woman behind the counter as she left without another word, the bell dinging once more.

Eve was frozen in place for a beat after she watched the woman walk by the window, off back down the street. It took a second until she became aware of herself again, but when she did she shot up, scrambling to collect all of her belongings in her handbag, thanked the woman and headed out onto the street.

Villanelle rounded the corner and she chased after her, growing breathless pretty quickly.

“Villanelle!” she called out, stomping after her. She wasn’t angry yet really, but she could feel the beginnings of it fluttering in her stomach.

The young woman froze immediately at the mention of her name and Eve came to an abrupt stop twenty paces behind her. It was as though Villanelle didn’t dare turn around, but when she did, she shot Eve a look of confusion.

“Eve?” she asked, and it seemed as though it was a genuine question.

That was all it took for Eve to stalk forward towards the woman.

“Seriously ‘Eve?!’, that’s all you have to say?” she asked her in disbelief, furiously shaking her head. She could feel her cheeks and the tip of her nose turning red from cold, her coat slung over her arm as she had been too much of a hurry to properly dress for the conditions.

“Well… yes?” Villanelle asked as if it was the most obvious question in the world. “What are you doing here, Eve?” she asked.

For once, there wasn’t really malice behind her words, rather absolute confusion and Eve didn’t know if it confused her too or made her all the angrier.

“You… you can’t be serious right now?” Eve asked her and it sounded like a warning. She stepped forward and Villanelle stepped back, Eve’s frown lines deepening with each passing second. “Where the fuck have you been Villanelle? I’m pretty certain Mikael thinks you’re dead” she explained.

Villanelle seemed surprised by that “I have been here on a vacation Eve” she said, gesturing to their surroundings. “I didn’t know that I was required to inform you of my whereabouts _at all times”_ the young woman admitted, and it sounded earnest, but that didn’t stop the vicious slap that landed on Villanelle’s cheek by Eve’s hand.

“Are you fucking kidding me right now, Villanelle?” Eve asked, snorting back a laugh. “Is it that hard for you to reply to a text or answer a fucking call?” she asked, exasperated.

Villanelle clutched her cheek but didn’t otherwise react.

“I… well, I’m sorry that you were worried-“ she started, only to be cut off by Eve.

“No, now let’s get one thing straight, I wasn’t worried about you Villanelle, not for a second” Eve lied. “In fact, I had hoped that finally, someone might have gotten the better of you,” she said harshly, her eyes going wild as she looked at the younger woman.

Villanelle raised her eyebrows at that, and a smirk finally took over her face. “Wow, Eve… that’s harsh” she said, and Eve nodded, pleased with herself. “Except, here you are… stalking me on my vacation, and apparently blowing up my phone, all because you’re not concerned… right”.

She was taunting her, and it took everything in her not to slap the younger woman again.

“I’m doing my fucking job” Eve protested, and Villanelle’s grin only grew wider.

“I’m your job?” Villanelle asked and Eve looked at her in disbelief. “You’re not doing a very good job, Eve” Villanelle said, and once again it felt genuine. “Another… 12 hours and you might have missed me” Villanelle admitted as she checked over her watch, a short laugh leaving her lips.

“Well… well if you had done your job and answered the _god damn phone_ , then I wouldn’t have had to chase you down, would I?” Eve asked, and they were right back to playing the blame game.

Villanelle answered her with an eye roll, turning around and continuing on her walk, Eve stalking behind her, frustration mounting by the second.

“Believe it or not, Eve… that’s not what my job is, you know only too well what my job is,” Villanelle reminded her, and for the first time in a long time she remembered Romano “and I couldn’t answer the phone because some things kind of… didn’t go to plan with my actual job, and I had to get rid of everything” Villanelle explained.

Eve wasn’t letting her get away with that. “Villanelle, you could have called, there are phones everywhere” she reminded her, and Villanelle turned around, looking at her as though she had grown a second head.

“What was it you said, Eve? ‘Don’t fuck it up’?” Villanelle asked her. “You guys want me to keep things on the down-low, Mikael told me only to use secure lines, and now _I’m_ in trouble?” Villanelle asked. “I didn’t think it was much of a big deal, I worked hard, I deserved a vacation” Villanelle said, as though it was that simple.

Eve furiously shook her head. “Do you ever think about anyone but yourself, huh?” she asked, not even allowing Villanelle to answer. “I’ve traipsed across Europe trying to find out whether you’d gotten yourself killed,” she told Villanelle.

Villanelle looked at her curiously “hardly across Europe, Eve… it’s only like 700 kilometres from here to Budapest” she said, and Eve’s eyebrows shot up in protest. “Let me speak” the young woman interjected. “I could have died, Eve… he wasn’t alone, there was many more of them than me, which is why I suspect they haven’t found him yet… but you shouldn’t doubt my capabilities to get the job done” Villanelle said proudly, though her face fell when she realised that she had just given Eve the upper hand.

“I’m not quite familiar with your abilities to get the job done, personally” Eve bit back, her hand subconsciously going to her side. “You should have called, but you didn’t call, because you wanted me to chase after you again, you’re hell-bent on destroying the small fragments of my life that I have left, aren’t you? Don’t deny it” she told her.

Villanelle shook her head in utter disbelief. “I want you to come here and ruin my vacation? No, Eve, I think not” she sighed. “I don’t care about you, or your life, if you’re happy or sad… I just, I don’t care” Villanelle answered with a shrug. “I told you that you’re not worth it to me anymore”.

Eve gulped.

“The feeling is very much mutual” she offered and ignored the look that Villanelle gave her as if to say, ‘look at where you are, Eve”.

Villanelle walked again and Eve followed.

“Mikael requests that you go back to Prague, there are jobs there waiting for you,” Eve said, feeling herself lose the argument, the rage in her unmatched by Villanelle, which just caused the anger that had built up inside Eve to become more intense.

“I don’t feel like it right now, I’m enjoying seeing the continent,” Villanelle said, and Eve sighed.

“I’m told they pay well” she informed Villanelle, assuming that it was the only incentive that she would need.

“I don’t care about the money, Eve, I am making memories,” she said, climbing up the slope, Eve following behind her.

“Making memories out here… by yourself?” Eve laughed. “It doesn’t even seem like your thing,” she said, ignoring how her feet were soaked to the bone since she wasn’t appropriately dressed up in snow boots like Villanelle was.

Villanelle smiled “It’s not really, but Zosia really wanted to attend this silent, wellness retreat thing… it was boring really, but we compromised and landed here so that we could ski afterwards” the young woman explained. “The retreat was kind of very boring, and I thought that I might kill the instructor, he was intolerable… but I guess it’s the things you do for great sex” she said candidly.

Eve’s heart skipped in her chest. It wasn’t jealousy, but who the fuck was Zosia.

As if on cue, she took in Villanelle’s expression and looked ahead to see the woman that she had seen leaving Villanelle’s apartment all of them weeks ago.

“Eve, my girlfriend Zosia… Zosia, Eve… an ex-girlfriend of mine” Villanelle introduced, and Eve swallowed the bile that rose in her throat, telling herself that it had nothing to do with the way in which Villanelle introduced someone as her girlfriend, and everything to do with the way that Villanelle introduced her as her ex-girlfriend when that absolutely was not the case.


	4. Copenhagen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The support on the story has been really encouraging, once again, so thank you for that! A little more Villaneve interaction in this one, as promised! Enjoy

Everything that she had thought beautiful about the town she now loathed. The snow that fell felt as cold as the stare awarded to her by Villanelle’s new girlfriend, the sun beaming down burned her sensitive skin which she wanted nothing more than to crawl out of right then, and the small town was now too small, and she had nowhere to run, to get away from this uncomfortable situation.

She took a moment, a deep breath to gain her composure and steeled herself, extending her hand out for the woman to shake. “Nice to meet you,” she said with a flicker of a fake smile. “She wishes, I’m her boss” she explained, shooting Villanelle a penetrating glare. She was angry, and she wanted the younger woman to know.

“Woah, Woah… be careful with her babe… she can be a little bit temperamental” Villanelle said, her eyes glued to Eve’s, a daring smirk on her lips as she snaked a protective arm around Zosia’s waist.

Eve rolled her eyes at the impossible woman – but she wasn’t all wrong. Eve was feeling rather temperamental, especially at this moment, and so she didn’t argue. She retracted her hand as quickly as she had offered it.

“You’re needed back at work, today,” Eve stated, without so much as an apology for interrupting their vacation. “So, you have an hour to pack your shit up and I’ll drive us back to Prague,” she said curtly, not offering another glance to the woman on Villanelle’s arm. She figured she might have to take her back too, so as to avoid another potentially deadly confrontation with Villanelle.

Villanelle narrowed her eyes at her, and Eve noticed the way that her mouth twitched upwards, a scowl on her face. Eve was annoying her, and she felt a sliver of satisfaction at that.

Eve watched as Villanelle transformed into a child, stomping her foot into the snow and balling her fists. “No, Eve, I wanted to ski today” she whined, and Eve looked on in utter dismay. Strange behaviour from Villanelle, who could kill her in a second if she was really bothered by the fact that Eve was prohibiting her ability to enjoy the freshly fallen snow. “I will not come until this evening,” she told Eve.

It seemed almost reasonable, a compromise, but after the hell that she had been through to get here, for how angry she was at the woman, she decided that she would deny her request.

“Actually—” she started, only to be interrupted by Zosia.

Villanelle was positively seething, and Eve wasn’t used to having the upper hand.

“Andrea, it seems important, we should go with your boss” she encouraged, and Eve hated how her heart sped up in her chest. There was so much information packed into one small sentence, so much to think about. First was the way that Zosia referred to Villanelle by a fake name – she was ashamed that knowing that caused a strange warm feeling in her chest. Perhaps Villanelle was giving herself to the woman, but certainly not completely which meant that it was only a matter of time until Villanelle cast her aside, or better yet – killed her. Second, the woman seemingly had respect for Eve or at least gave the impression that she did, and that would irk Villanelle like nothing else could.

“I’m afraid I must insist, _Andrea_ ” Eve confirmed with a fake smile, directed right at Villanelle. She reminded herself of Carolyn at that moment and wondered whether if she tried hard enough, she’d manage to exude the same confidence as her former boss. She knew that if she could, she might stand a chance at surviving this thing between her and Villanelle, might be able to separate herself from the situation just enough to get through it.

She watched Villanelle carefully, her anger manifesting itself in an exasperated look to Zosia and a deadly glare to Eve. She stalked off back down the mountain like a child might when they weren’t going to get their own way, and she wasn’t going to, it was two against one.

_Small victories._

She exchanged information with Zosia, telling her to pack up with _Andrea_ and that she would come by to pick them up when she herself had checked out of the hotel she was staying in.

The woman seemed polite enough and she almost felt bad for the reception she knew that she would receive from Villanelle back at the hotel. It wasn’t unlike Villanelle to take her frustrations out in a violent manner, thinking back to Rome. The only thing saving Zosia right now was Eve’s presence and Villanelle’s desire to prove a point – Eve was sure of it.

Her heart thrummed against her chest when she arrived back at the car, her head dropping down onto the steering wheel. Like most interactions with Villanelle, she was left exhausted. It was unexplainable, the deep-rooted emotions that existed between the two that had existed in her for so long that she wasn’t entirely sure when they had come, or whether she had been born with them. Did Villanelle feel them too? Was she capable? It wasn’t about feelings of love or lust or anything like that, they were raw, almost primal emotions that kept this cat-and-mouse game up. The unknown, the violence, the fear, the time and space that kept them just out of reach of one another and morphed their relationship into something new each time that they saw each other.

She didn’t love Villanelle, in fact, she was positive that she loathed the woman. But like it or not, she knew that they were bound to each other due to some weird workings of the universe. She wanted to scream at the knowledge, groaning against the steering wheel instead.

She’d never be done hating her. Even if, by some kind of miracle, she got to fatally wound the woman, she knew deep inside of herself that she would hate her for having the audacity to actually die.

-

The journey back to Prague began with an argument over who would drive. It had been a no-brainer for Eve, but she realised that everything had to be an argument with Villanelle, nothing could ever just be easy.

“Don’t you trust me?” Villanelle had asked, head tilted to the side – teasing and something else, smug maybe? Eve had looked at her incredulously until she realised that this was Villanelle trying to gain back the upper hand, she couldn’t rise to it if she wanted a smooth journey back to Prague.

“It’s not about that, but your name isn’t on the insurance” she stated, not budging from her place in the driver’s seat, despite the fact that Villanelle held the door open for her to get out.

The woman’s smirk only grew at that and Eve wondered what she had said wrong, what opportunity had she given Villanelle to escalate the argument? “Haven’t you ever broken the law, Eve?” she asked, and the words hit her like a ton of bricks. She had, and Eve felt irritated that Villanelle used it to win every argument.

“I have, but today isn’t one of them days, get your ass in the car, _Andrea,_ ” she said, a smile plastered across her face just as Villanelle’s fell. She couldn’t rise to it, she had to own who she was and what she had done, she couldn’t give Villanelle any ammunition.

The door slammed shut with such force that it vibrated against her side. Eve let out a sigh of relief and watched as Villanelle, dressed in a black, floral suit passed by the front of the car. She expected her to slide into the back of the car beside Zosia and was surprised when she dropped down into the passenger seat instead.

That could only mean trouble, she knew, glancing into the rear-view mirror to find that the look of surprise on Zosia’s face matched her own. “Alright,” she said, putting the car into drive and following the navigation system out of town.

She pondered the fact that she hadn’t checked in with Mikael since she had stumbled across Villanelle and became excited at the prospect of handing her over to him. Technically, she had apprehended an assassin, and Villanelle no less, something she hadn’t truly accomplished at MI6. She’d never dragged Villanelle kicking and screaming back to face the music. It would be good to see someone else angry at Villanelle for a change.

It took all of twenty minutes for Villanelle to get bored and start acting up. She unbuckled her seatbelt, and turned over in her seat, reaching into the back of the car, over Eve’s shoulder, fumbling through a bag. “Vi- _Andrea_ ” Eve gasped, trying to keep her focus on the road when she heard her plant a kiss on Zosia’s lips before she sat back down, a bag of Cheetos in hand.

“Yes?” Villanelle asked her, not regarding her as she opened the bag and stuffed a handful of chips into her mouth. “I was just getting my snacks,” she said, feigning innocence, Eve gesturing for her to put her seatbelt back in place.

“You should have let me drive, I don’t like to be bored, Eve,” Villanelle said, and Eve rolled her eyes. It was all about the fact that Eve hadn’t let her drive, she knew it.

Five more minutes and Cheeto dust covered the car almost entirely, Villanelle wiping her hands on the leather seats, despite Eve’s insistence that she didn’t make a mess. Wrong thing to say, she realised when Villanelle reached back for another bag to see just how much damage she could do.

She flicked on the radio too. Eve welcomed it because it was surely better than the uncomfortable silence that had fallen in the car. She wished that Villanelle had sat in the back, but then considered that she might have had to listen to them kissing for the whole journey, or worse, knowing that Villanelle’s self-control was extremely low on a good day, imagining that, that applied to sex too.

It was less welcoming when Villanelle flicked between songs and stations like there was no tomorrow, fiddling with all of the car’s controls simultaneously. One minute there was freezing cold air blowing through the heating system, next her ass was on fire from the heated seats.

“Can you stop?” Eve asked her, losing patience like she often did with Villanelle. “You’re like a child, can’t you leave things alone?”.

Villanelle looked at her like she was being unreasonable. “I didn’t like that one, Eve, I am sorry,” she said, sitting back against her chair after she had changed the channel a final time.

Eve smiled, satisfied and turned her attention back to the navigation system, crossing over the border to the national park again. It was prettier in the daylight, she thought she might like to vacation there someday.

The view had distracted her enough that she hadn’t noticed Villanelle had lifted her purse from the footwell and was busy emptying its contents onto the floor, rifling through it. “Ooh” the young woman cooed upon locating a lip balm, rubbing it across her lips and smacking them together. Eve looked to her, twice, three times before she noticed what she was doing.

She reached out and batted the woman’s hand away from her belongings. “Stop it, now” she barked at her, trying to reach for the bag whilst keeping her eyes on the road. “You can’t just… go through my things” she argued, remembering when Villanelle had been as destructive, if not worse, around her former home.

“Why not? I am bored” Villanelle reminded her, wrapping her fingers around Eve’s cell phone. Eve reached out to hit at her hands again, but Villanelle held it just out of reach.

“Seriously, stop,” she said, catching herself before she slipped up on the name again.

Villanelle opened up Eve’s iPhone with the same passcode, clicking straight on to their text conversation. “One text, Eve? Just one?” Villanelle asked, shocked. “Woooooow” she sounded offended.

Eve grasped her phone, finally, and threw it back into her purse, holding it protectively beneath her arm.

-

Zosia was silent on the journey back to Prague, Villanelle directing her to the woman’s apartment. So long had passed without a word that Eve simply offered a curt nod when the woman left the car, Villanelle exiting the car too but not quick enough to open the door for the woman.

Eve watched their frosty interaction, Zosia resisting Villanelle’s touch and kiss, speaking to her again in a language that Eve didn’t understand. Villanelle huffed and looked right at Eve when the woman walked into her apartment building, walking around to talk to her through the open window. “I will not be long, I have to talk things over with her, she is very upset with me” Villanelle stated, and the feeling of satisfaction bloomed in her chest once more.

“No can do, I’m afraid” Eve said without a second thought. “I think you’ve taken up enough of my time, you will have to deal with your relationship problems later,” she said, realising it was rather petty and childish but not caring at all.

Villanelle eyed her, with a glimmer of admiration, Eve thought. Finally, she was standing up for herself. “Okay,” Villanelle said, and she sounded amused as she walked around the car and slid in beside her again. “Are you sure you do not want me to drive? I can get us there very fast so that I don’t waste _any more of your time_ ” she teased. It sounded almost seductive and she was far too close to her.

“I’m good” Eve said, forcing herself to smile, wanting to come across as unaffected by Villanelle. She sped away from the apartment building without warning, throwing Villanelle back in her seat.

-

She was used to driving in cities, but not in Prague, and it took her a while to navigate the streets, ignoring Villanelle each time she uttered ‘Woah’ under her breath, as though Eve was driving carelessly, which she wasn’t, it was just a few mistakes.

“I imagine Mikael is very angry at me, so it is okay with me if you kill us in a road accident” Villanelle said, and it almost felt as though Rome hadn’t happened, and that weird thing that used to exist between them still did – it didn’t though, she reminded herself.

She parked up outside of the office and turned to Villanelle “no such luck” she told her, getting out of the car and stretching the stiffness out of her legs before approaching the building. She entered ahead of Villanelle and breezed up the stairs, looking behind her to see Villanelle stood, almost nervous, which was hilarious. She rolled her eyes and continued up the stairs.

“Mikael” she greeted, listening to him bellow about how she couldn’t just back out of a mission, berating her until Villanelle appeared behind her, Mikael looking on in disbelief.

“Villanelle, I have been so worried about you,” he told her, soft like Konstantin had once spoken to her, Eve recalled. “Is everything okay? Did you run into trouble?” he asked.

Eve cleared her throat, regaining Mikael’s attention. “She decided it was time for a vacation, with her girlfriend,” she said, not feeling bad at all for ratting out the younger woman. She had wasted to much time, resources and compromised the whole operation.

Mikael told her so, as Eve sat on her desk, watching the back and forth like a tennis match.

Villanelle trying to justify her actions: “I could have died, I needed to take a break”.

Mikael’s frustration that she thought that she was the one that got to call the shots: “You think your job finishes when you kill a man? It finishes when you report back to Eve or me. You have been reckless, compromised yourself and everyone else”.

He was angry.

Eve didn’t realise how angry, and neither did Villanelle until he pulled a gun out of the waistband of his pants and pointed it right at her.

Eve’s breath caught in her throat out of surprise, rather than anything else.

Could she really sit here and watch him do it?

Would he do it?

“Give me one reason why I shouldn’t, Villanelle?” Mikael instructed. “You’ve been nothing but problematic” he finished, Eve surprised that someone else was acknowledging the fact.

Villanelle cocked her head to the side, smirking at him. “You shouldn’t because I am the best,” she said, confidence dripping off of her and Eve was envious. “Unless you want to, then you totally should do it,” Villanelle said because that really was her own philosophy. If you want to do something, then do it. “But it would be a shame to blow out my brains when I am looking this beautiful,” she said, actually spinning in a circle to show off _how good she looked_. And she did. Eve hated to admit, but when didn’t Villanelle look good?

“Do you have another job for me, I am ready to go back to work now after all of my relaxing” Villanelle stated, Eve considering that Villanelle was probably itching for a kill. After some wellness retreat, the argument with Eve, the argument with her new girlfriend. She was probably dying for it.

Mikael laughed “oh you think you can be trusted now to work?”. He lowered the gun though and Eve breathed a sigh of relief. She didn’t particularly want to witness a murder today, is what she told herself.

“I think that you know I am very good at my job, and I will be on my best behaviour,” Villanelle said, the tone of her voice sickly sweet.

It seemed to work because Eve witnessed the corners of Mikael’s mouth twitch up into a smile. That was really all he wanted after all.

“You can’t be trusted to go alone, things are very time-sensitive… now that you decided to _take a vacation_ ” he taunted. “Eve will have to accompany you, handle you _for real,_ ” he told her.

Eve’s jaw practically dropped open at that. “Absolutely not, you assured me that I wouldn’t have to… travel with her” she told Mikael, noticing the look of distaste on Villanelle’s face too.

“Mikael, I have been very reasonable with Eve… but I cannot promise you that I won’t kill her” Villanelle warned, and Eve laughed a full belly laugh. Reasonable?

“I think that that the same can be said about her regarding you, but it is a chance that I will have to take…” Mikael looked to Eve. “I am sorry that this is not what you wish for, but it is necessary, for the operation,” he said, Eve, shaking her head in disbelief.

“And if I refuse?” she asked him, wanting to truly weigh up her options.

“Then I’ll kill you, Eve, of course” he laughed, menacing like when they’d taken her from her apartment in London and for all intents and purposes, removed Eve Polastri from existence.

She gulped and looked to Villanelle who’s smile matched Mikael’s. She’d seen an opportunity, for some fun. Villanelle was like a predator that caught its pray and played with it until it gave out, tired, and succumbed to an ugly death. She imagined herself between Villanelle’s teeth and regretted that it was sexual images that flashed through her mind. Eve battered and bloody beneath Villanelle, but for once, satisfied.

-

It hadn’t been a discussion as to whether Eve and Villanelle both agreed with the new arrangement – the both of them just resigning themselves to the fact that it would just be a temporary thing. Right?

Copenhagen was the first stop. Mikael keen to get through a backlog of hits that had been mounting ever since Villanelle did her disappearing act and all of their resources went to finding her, rather than going after their targets. They would be leaving that same day, and Villanelle had three days to get in and get out and report back to Mikael. Hearing the brief at the same time as Villanelle made Eve feel like more of an accomplice than ever, and it didn’t help that she would be joining her.

She clarified her level of involvement – pleased to know that she would only be acting as babysitter up until the kill and then immediately after. Villanelle kicked up a fuss at that, suggesting that she had some pre- and post-kill rituals that Eve’s presence might interrupt. She wondered what they were.

Villanelle now would be required to make use of a tracking device that would be on her person at all times and allow both Eve, and those back in the office to locate her.

“That is an invasion of privacy!” Villanelle argued. “They can take our lives… but they will never take our freedom!” she shouted, animated, frustrated. Eve vaguely recognised it as a quote from a movie but didn’t pay much attention to it.

Mikael laughed though, shaking his head and handing them the documentation.

“Don’t disappoint me Villanelle, I won’t be so kind next time” he warned her. “And Eve, thank you,” he said, and it seemed sincere, but she was past caring.

-

They went their separate ways upon leaving the building. Eve went to the car and didn’t offer Villanelle a ride back to her apartment, it wasn’t far after all.

“I will get a phone Eve, and I will text you when I am ready, and you can pick me up” she instructed, Eve frowning in response.

“I will meet you at the airport” she corrected her. She wasn’t going to be doing Villanelle any favours. “Be on time for the flight, your problems with your girlfriend will have to wait,” she told Villanelle, hating that it seemed laced with jealousy – that wasn’t the case.

Villanelle cocked her brow “I don’t need a lot of time to make her feel much better Eve, don’t worry, I will be on time” she said, swanning off down the sidewalk. Eve watched her go and sighed to herself.

-

By the time Eve had reached the airport and handed the car over to the rental company to be driven back to Budapest, it was she who almost didn’t make the flight.

She rushed through check-in and baggage drop and panicked once again at security. Would it be suspicious if it was her second flight in a week?

She all but ran to the gate, looking down at her phone when she was sure that she would make it in time.

Texts from Villanelle.

**Villanelle [17:18]:** I got a new phone, this is my new number.

**Villanelle [18:08]:** I really can’t ride with you? I do not like trains, they stink.

**Villanelle [19:32]:** Well I am at the airport now, thank you for nothing.

**Villanelle [19:57]:** Where are you?

**Villanelle [20:05]:** Wow. I can’t believe you killed yourself because you didn’t want to come with me to Copenhagen. That is so dramatic Eve. 😲

Eve approached and was unsurprised that Villanelle, like most passengers, had already boarded the place. She scanned her boarding pass and walked through to the plane, glad not to be seated beside Villanelle and instead two rows behind.

She passed her and glared, Villanelle smirking in response.

Eve threw her bag beneath the seat in front of her and sat down, glancing down into her lap when her phone lit up.

**Villanelle [20:18]:** Very unprofessional.

Eve rolled her eyes, turning off the device and leaning her head back. She knew that she would need a stiff drink when they arrived in order to make it through.

-

An hour and twenty-five minutes of staring at the back of Villanelle’s head later, and they touched down in the Danish capital. Villanelle waited for her at the baggage claim, retrieving her own small case and waiting for Eve to retrieve her own. “I will hire a car this time so that I can be the one that gets to drive,” she told Eve and Eve shrugged her response. She was tired, hungry and cranky by now, and was excited to get some respite from Villanelle once they reached the hotel.

“Did you work things out with your girlfriend?” she asked when she was in the car, seated in the passenger seat this time and unable to bear the awkward silence. This time, she was bored.

Villanelle glanced in her direction “you seem very interested in my personal life Eve, you aren’t jealous, are you?” the woman asked. She seemed to revel in the idea that Eve might still be harbouring feelings for her, and she wasn’t – she told herself over and over. She’d never really, truly wanted her.

“Don’t be pathetic, _Andrea_ ” Eve scoffed, Villanelle side-eyeing her then.

“It seems she is another that finds it hard to resist my charm” Villanelle explained, again with the over-the-top confidence.

Eve didn’t justify it with a response, shaking her head and staring out of the window.

“Forget I asked” she mumbled beneath her breath.

It was once she’d parked up at the hotel that Villanelle spoke again. “I hope he booked me a nice suite, not like last time,” she said, turning her nose up in disgust.

“You will get what you are given, Villanelle” Eve bit back, walking up to the reception. “I’m here to check-in,” she said, handing over the booking confirmation letter provided by Mikael.

She showed her identification, when required and looked on perplexed when the woman read off “twin room, two adults”, figuring that there must have been a mistake and quickly realising what had happened.

“No, I am not sharing a room with you,” she said, looking to Villanelle.

“You get what you are given, Eve” the young woman smirked, swiping the room key from between her fingers and sauntering towards the elevator.


	5. Roskilde

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait, I had a little bit of writer's block. It felt weird to me researching 'fatal stab wounds' for this one -- god forbid there really is someone checking out my search history. Haha. Enjoy, and thanks for all of the support thus far.

Eve scoffed in disbelief as Villanelle walked off with _her_ room key. The tension was palpable between them, almost physical, and Eve imagined that if they were players of one of the video games that her ex-husband used to play, Villanelle had just pressed ‘challenge’ and it was up to Eve to choose her next move carefully so that she didn’t lose a life.

That was what it amounted to between them – life and death, but also the satisfaction of outdoing the other, and Eve wasn’t ready to give up her winning streak. She looked to the receptionist who looked at her almost sympathetically, as though sensing that this wasn’t exactly an ideal situation for her and she licked over her lips, offering her a tight smile. It was uncomfortable, like Eve.

The elevator reached the ground floor and Villanelle stepped into it, turning around to face her. She tilted her head to one side, a cocky grin on her lips. If Eve were to ask for her own room, Villanelle would win by default and would most likely assume that Eve hadn’t gotten over everything between them like Villanelle obviously had. However, if she were to join her in the elevator on the way to their shared room, Villanelle, inclined to believe whatever she wanted to believe, would probably take it as confirmation that Eve _wanted_ to share a room with her because she wasn’t over everything. Either way, it seemed to be a lose-lose.

Her eyes flitted from Villanelle to the receptionist who looked at her expectantly and then back at Villanelle who waved the key card at her and held open the elevator doors, eyebrows raised – a silent ‘are you coming?’. She considered herself for a fleeting moment, thought about what it would mean to be around Villanelle, in such close proximity, for such an extended period of time and what it might do to her mental stability. There was a serious possibility that they could end up trying to kill each other once again. It was her turn if their track record was anything to go by. Her legs carried her forward anyway, suitcase dragging behind her, shooting the receptionist a quiet “thank you”.

She stepped inside the elevator and stood as far away from Villanelle as the small space allowed, arms crossing over her chest. In her mind, she was setting the tone for how this arrangement would go. They would stay as separate and as far away from one another as possible.

Eve was furious at herself for not foreseeing this as a possibility, considering the fact that Mikael had instructed her to babysit Villanelle essentially. She had been naïve and not really thought about what that would mean. She was even more furious at Mikael for not spelling it out, for putting her in the position in the first place given their history, and even more furious as Villanelle for being Villanelle. She could feel the smirk on the woman’s lips without seeing it, resisting the urge to slap it off.

Instead of returning her stare, she looked up at the fluorescent, almost blinding light on the elevator ceiling. It felt warm against her face and the amber and gold tones actually calmed her somehow. She took a deep breath and focused on the elevator music that carried them on their journey up to the top floor.

Finally, when the elevator stopped, she looked to Villanelle with a scowl and led the way out of the elevator, hearing the woman wheeling her own suitcase behind her. “Imagine, Eve… we are finally getting a room” she uttered, breaking out into another shit-eating grin that made Eve shiver. In disgust, is what she explained it as to herself, looking towards the woman with a glare.

Villanelle stepped ahead of her to unlock the room, stepping into Eve’s personal space and forcing her to take a step back. Eve watched her swipe the key down until it flashed green – unlocked. The woman pushed it open and gestured for Eve to enter. “Please” Villanelle’s voice was low, and Eve looked at her incredulously in reaction, shaking her head as she walked in ahead of her.

She sighed when she took it all in. It was small, definitely the smallest hotel room she had been given by her employers, and she was forced to sleep beside Villanelle, the beds less than four feet apart and separated only by a nightstand. She stood, gripping onto the suitcase as she looked to Villanelle who turned her nose up at the room too.

“Very cosy” Villanelle looked back to Eve. “Which bed do you want?” she asked, Eve looking between the two. It wasn’t a calculated move when she chose the one furthest from the door and closest to the window, and she considered that it maybe should have been.

She turned around to look at Villanelle who regarded her with a curious look. “I think that we need to establish some ground rules” Villanelle spoke, blowing out a breath through her mouth as she looked around the small room. Eve’s eyebrows knitted together, watching Villanelle’s cheeks deflate and wondering how she had the audacity to want to establish boundaries after everything that she had put her through.

“Right?”

“I do not want to have sex with you, Eve… so no trying to get into my bed” Villanelle told her, but her tone of voice – sultry and seductive, contradicted her words entirely. Was it reverse psychology, or was Villanelle simply trying to get a rise out of her?

Eve regarded her with a look that screamed ‘you’ve got to be kidding’ and stopped herself at the eleventh hour from arguing with the woman in response. She licked over her lips and smiled back at Villanelle, deciding to play her at her own game. She’d got this far, it would be a shame to allow Villanelle the satisfaction of angering her this early in the game, they still had days of this after all. “Very presumptuous, Vill, but fine, what else?”. The nickname slipped from her lips as though it had been the most natural thing in the world, but it was certainly a calculated move, to catch the younger woman off guard.

And it did.

Villanelle looked at her, stunned and almost confused. She had expected an argument. “Nothing else, that is it,” she said, her tone of voice unsure and making her statement sound more like a question.

Eve offered her a curt nod. “Very well, well I’m going to order some food and get ready for bed,” she said, figuring to give the woman a play-by-play in the hopes that it would be the extent of their interaction for the night.

“Okay” Villanelle nodded, taking a seat on her bed and watching Eve, wide-eyed. Her eyes didn’t leave Eve even when she reached into her bag to retrieve her laptop, powering it up as she watched Eve move around the room, calling up room service, grabbing the items required for a shower. Eve could feel her staring and resisted the urge to look at her with a satisfied grin of her own.

Instead, she took herself off to the bathroom without so much as a glance in the woman’s direction. She pushed the door quietly closed and turned the lock before pressing her back up against it and letting out a breath she didn’t know she had been holding. It was overwhelming, to say the least, and she was tired and worried about keeping up this persona. The confidence that she was exuding whilst communicating with Villanelle didn’t come naturally to her at all, and she wondered whether Villanelle would tolerate it when she began to prepare herself for the hit. Would it do more harm than good? Was it better for Villanelle to have the upper-hand right now? She wasn’t sure. But the sense of gratification that she felt about having maintained the power all day won out and she decided to keep it up as long as she could.

When she had gained her composure, she lost her articles of clothing one-by-one, all too aware of the fact that Villanelle was mere feet away from her, on the other side of the wall. She gave a thought to how all of this must be making the young woman feel. The last time that they had worked together so closely and for such an extended period of time was Rome, when Eve had wound up with a bullet in her side. She stood beneath the spray and wished that she could drown in it.

-

When she had washed away her sins and the residual grease and grime from her flight and journey back to Prague with Villanelle, she re-emerged from the bathroom, her usual wild curls in ringlets, water dripping from them onto her nightshirt. She looked towards Villanelle who was busy typing codes into her laptop from the brief that she had obviously retrieved from Eve’s own purse. So much for boundaries.

A pizza was laid beside the woman, and when she acknowledged Eve it was with a slice between her lips and still, she managed to smirk. It was obvious that whilst Eve had showered, Villanelle had centred herself and was ready to play again. Eve stood up straighter and prepared herself.

“That’s mine” she nodded towards the pizza, looking between the box and Villanelle.

“Yes, Eve, it is” Villanelle took another huge bite from the slice, reaching the cheese-stuffed crust. Pizza grease glistened on her top lip and Eve forced herself to look up to meet her eyes. “It was rude of you not to ask if I wanted to have dinner with you,” Villanelle said matter-of-factly, chastising her like an adult would a child. “But I am a gentleman, and I did not eat it all,” Villanelle said, extending the box toward Eve.

Eve wanted to laugh at the suggestion that Villanelle was a gentleman. The woman was neither gentle nor a man. “Why thank you, kind sir” she proffered with a not-so-subtle eye roll. It was sarcastic, as was the salute she offered the woman as she took the box from her, looking to the nightstand to see that Villanelle had drained almost half of her glass of wine as well. “I thought we agreed to respect each other’s boundaries?” she asked, confused.

“Aren’t I respecting your boundaries, Eve?” Villanelle asked, tilting her head to the side, Eve realising that once again, the same rules didn’t seem to apply to Villanelle.

She overlooked it as she sat on her bed and rested back against the headboard. “How is the research coming along?” she took a slice of pizza from the box and bit into it, looking over at Villanelle’s laptop when she turned it towards her.

“It’s okay” Villanelle shrugged. “Sigrid Janson, 30 years old, keeper for The Twelve. She owns a baked goods company on the side, cute right?” she laughed, cackled, and Eve looked at her with equal amusement. “Anyway, she’s expanding the business, by the looks of her Gmail account, and has a meeting with a courier executive tomorrow, something about offering nationwide delivery” Villanelle shrugged in disinterest. Eve extended the pizza box towards her again as she took in the Gmail calendar which suggested that the woman would be in the country for the next five days. Villanelle accepted without a word, taking a slice and another huge bite from it. Eve watched her tongue move between her parted lips to break up the stringy cheese, redirecting her attention back to the calendar when Villanelle’s eyes met her own.

It didn’t surprise her that Villanelle was proficient in hacking, but the thought crossed her mind for a brief, curious moment as to whether Villanelle had ever hacked into her accounts, maybe used them to keep tabs on her whilst they had been apart? Or had she taken Eve’s approach and tried to forget about her completely?

“We will go for lunch tomorrow, Café Norden, 1 pm” Villanelle interrupted Eve whilst she was deep in thought.

“Oh?” Eve asked, confused until she realised that must be where the meeting was taking place. “ _Oh_ … okay” she nodded, glad that the only light in the room was coming from Villanelle’s laptop which she had turned back to face her just in time to miss the blush on Eve’s cheeks. Villanelle smirked at her.

Eve handed her the last of the pizza and drained the rest of the wine, shuffling around until she was beneath the sheets. “I’m going to sleep,” Eve said, back already turned to the woman. “Goodnight” Eve laid, nuzzling her face into the pillow, reminding herself of the last time that she had said goodnight to the woman. It had been in Rome when she had climbed off of Hugo and collapsed down into the sheets beside him, nuzzled her face into her pillow like she was right now. Villanelle hadn’t heard her, but it had been in response to the woman’s own breathy ‘goodnight, sleep well’. Eve had laid awake, listening until Villanelle’s breathing had evened out and soft snores had been the only sounds drifting through the earpiece. Eve had smiled and the sound itself had lulled her to sleep.

“Goodnight, Eve” Villanelle replied and Eve feigned sleep. She thought for the first time that Villanelle might take the easy route and murder her in her sleep. It hadn’t crossed her mind before then but tormented her and preventing sleep from taking her. Instead, she laid awake, listening to Villanelle tap away on her laptop keys, heard her get up to use the restroom, heard the peeling away of her clothes as she undressed behind her and heard her slip beneath the sheets. It was only when her breathing evened out and soft snores filled the room that she succumbed to sleep herself.

-

It was late morning when she woke, squinting against the sunlight and stretching out beneath the sheets. It took her a moment to remember that she wasn’t alone, and she quickly rolled over to observe Villanelle sleeping too. It surprised her that the woman wasn’t an early riser. She watched her, a frown on her face at how serene Villanelle looked. It didn’t seem real that someone who looked so cute sleeping could be capable of the things that Villanelle was capable of. She couldn’t believe that the woman who seemed so childlike in her slumber was the monster that had made her life a living hell for years now.

Rolling onto her back, she let out a long breath and stared up at the ceiling, grazing her thumb against the scar on her side.

“Good morning” Villanelle mumbled, her voice thick with sleep. Like the night before, it reminded her of Rome.

“Hi,” Eve said, turning her head to look in her direction.

“You were watching me sleep” Villanelle stated, a smirk gracing her lips again. Another invitation for an argument and Eve refused to take the bait.

“Mhm, you should probably take a shower, we need to leave soon” Eve explained, pulling herself up out of bed and making it.

“Yes, boss,” Villanelle said, saluting and slinking off into the bathroom.

-

The woman had taken her time preparing for the meeting, Eve almost growing impatient at how Villanelle smoothed each and every hair into place in her ponytail, a baseball cap on her head which shielded her face from view somewhat. It was a disguise, Eve figured and didn’t ask questions. Her usual style was replaced with head-to-toe Adidas which made her stand out less than she usually did. She looked almost normal, not particularly striking, and Eve imagined that she could have walked by her in the street one thousand times without realising. She understood that that was what Villanelle was going for, there was every chance that after the previous hits, anyone associated with the Twelve was on high alert, expecting her almost.

Eve followed Villanelle blindly as she went about her business, taking the subway to the café and scouting around until she located a table she thought would keep her at a safe distance but close enough to take in everything that was going on with the meeting. A steaming pot of coffee was placed between them, as well as avocado with poached egg on toast – Villanelle’s choice. Eve looked down at it and willed herself to eat it and let Villanelle get on with whatever it was she was doing, but she couldn’t resist the urge to turn around to take in the action for herself for what had to be the fifth time.

“Will you stop that, now” Villanelle hissed through gritted teeth, Eve’s eyes returning to her untouched plate and she furiously cut into the toast in recognition that Villanelle was growing impatient with her.

“What’s happening?” Eve asked, chewing on the toast, her heart almost jumping out of her chest at how quickly Villanelle’s eyes met hers. She stopped chewing and watched her carefully. Villanelle’s death stare bore into her and she swallowed her food. “I’m sorry” she whispered, a guilty expression on her face.

“I won’t ask you again, Eve. I’m trying to _do my job_ and you need to shut up and do yours” Villanelle whisper shouted at her. The young woman shook her head at her in frustration before turning her attention back to Sigrid. Eve didn’t know what to do with herself then. She was so used to being the one doing the investigating that she found it hard to overcome her intrigue and fought the urge to turn around again. Instead of focusing on whatever it was she couldn’t see behind her, she focused on what was in front of her, on Villanelle. Her eyes traced over each and every one of the young woman’s features. A vein protruded from her forehead as she concentrated, her lips pressed into a thin line. She looked concerned when she was concentrating, Eve thought. Her eyes drifted down to her throat, watching her swallow. “And stop watching me like that” Villanelle finished. Eve resisted the urge to smirk at how she was affecting the woman. She was annoying her, no doubt, but she seemed nervous too.

It made her feel powerful that someone with so much confidence wasn’t able to handle the pressure of her gaze

Eve continued to watch her, confused when she got up without warning and threw some cash down on the table to cover their bill. Eve’s head turned to look behind her and she realised that the target was no longer there. “What? You’re just letting her get away?” Eve asked, confused as she trailed behind Villanelle who walked as though she didn’t have a care in the world, so casual.

“I was trying to eavesdrop when you wouldn’t stop talking, Eve” Villanelle looked to her with another glare. “She is finished with her work and has plans to attend the Roskilde music festival with her friends. I’ve never worked a music event before… well unless you count the _club_ ” Villanelle said, a guilty expression gracing her features. Eve didn’t need her to elaborate to know that she was talking about Bill.

“You want to do it at the festival? And how do you propose we find her there, there will be thousands there” Eve reminded her, growing frustrated with how casual Villanelle kept things, how she really had no plan.

Villanelle stopped suddenly and looked at her incredulously. “Seriously, Eve?” she asked in complete disbelief. “You found me time and time again, there are plenty of ways to find her, like tracking her phone” Villanelle suggested, shaking her head in annoyance and walking off again. “Anyway, what do you mean _we_? I thought that you will not be there?” a smirk worked its way on to her lips “unless you want to be the Bonnie to my Clyde?” she laughed, loudly and winked at her.

Eve shot her a look of disgust and shook her head. “No, but I mean if you’re travelling then I’ll have to be… you know, around… I’ll let you do your thing though” she told her with absolute certainty, ignoring the way that Villanelle shrugged in disbelief.

She couldn’t believe that she was talking so casually about a murder. How times had changed.

-

Eve tried to squeeze a plan out of Villanelle on the drive to Roskilde. They’d packed lightly and left their booking open for when they returned to Copenhagen. It provided them with an alibi that they didn’t even need, seeing as they will have left the country before the dust had settled, probably before a body was even recovered due to the vastness of the event they were attending, and the number of people that would be in the vicinity.

Villanelle was growing restless with Eve’s relentless questions, already preparing herself, steeling herself, but Eve wasn’t able to see it over her own excitement. It didn’t register to her as excitement until Villanelle shot her a look, a pleased look. “I think that I will want to spend some time there” Villanelle explained, Eve looking over at her as they queued in the never-ending traffic that led to the festival entrance. Villanelle had used her false documentation to buy tickets and had even upgraded to a larger, more luxurious, pre-built tent. It seemed that Villanelle wouldn’t have the patience to build her own under the circumstances.

“Where? At the festival?” Eve regarded her suspiciously, rolling her eyes when Villanelle nodded. “Absolutely not, are you stupid?” Eve continued without thought, looking at Villanelle as though she had grown a second head. The car was already practically stationary in the slow-moving traffic, but Villanelle slammed on the breaks nevertheless, looking directly at Eve and daring her to continue. “You need to get in there and do it as quickly as possible” Eve advised, quieter now though under the woman’s gaze.

A sound left Villanelle, a ‘hmmph’ almost. “Now I know you’re not telling me how I should do my job, Eve” Villanelle’s eyes bore into Eve, trying to intimidate her. “Lord knows I don’t tell you how to do yours” she finished, Eve narrowing her eyes at her.

“Oh really? You just tell me how bad I am at it.” Eve felt a sense of satisfaction that she was sticking up for herself once again -- “I’m simply returning the favour”.

Villanelle’s jaw clenched, Eve watched her turn her attention back to the road, her knuckles turning white at the grip she had on the steering wheel. “Hit a nerve, did I?” she teased, gasping at the backhanded slap that landed against her cheek.

“I am not in the mood”.

Eve couldn’t help but smile, despite the sting against her cheek.

-

Villanelle’s nose turned up in disgust when she finally pulled up at their pitch and took in the sight of their tent. “This is the upgrade?” she groaned out, unzipping the tent and sliding in, giving Eve a long view of her perfectly rounded ass. Eve shook them thoughts out of her mind and slid in behind her with their bags, looking around. It wouldn’t be comfortable, and they would be infinitely closer than they had been the night before.

“More reason for you to get it done quickly then” Eve suggested, pulling at the packaged blankets that were left for them atop the air mattress. A singular double air mattress occupied the space in the tent, which suggested that they would be sleeping together, and Eve knew she had to make sure that Villanelle did it that evening.

“I told you, I want to stay at least one night, my favourite band is performing on the main stage tomorrow” Villanelle explained, and Eve sighed, shaking her head at the woman.

“It’s dangerous, Villanelle” she reminded her, rolling her eyes when Villanelle’s lips twitched up into yet another smirk.

“You like danger, don’t deny it” she whispered, her voice low again and trying to get some kind of reaction from Eve – arousal maybe?

The moment passed quickly when Villanelle got to work, waiting, tracking, dressing, waiting, more waiting.

Eve rested back against the mattress and watched her, completely in the zone, Eve tuned out. Villanelle seemed to grow antsy, impatient with each passing second. She admired her weapon of choice that she had somehow concealed in her luggage, a switchblade much like the one that Eve had used on Villanelle all that time ago in Paris. Eve admired it too, the green handle, the blade when Villanelle ejected it over and over. It would be so easy for Villanelle, with Eve so relaxed, so plunge it into her chest, Eve thought.

The woman’s eyes flicked up to her own and she smiled. “Do you want to hold it?” she offered, licking her lips as she held the knife out towards Eve. The older woman chuckled and shook her head.

“I’ll leave that to the professional” she affirmed, watching still. She noticed the look in the woman’s eye, distant, far away, deadly. She was ready, it had been a long time as far as Villanelle was concerned. “Are you excited?” she asked without thought and tilted her head to the side when Villanelle looked at her in surprise.

“Very” the woman replied, turning her attention back to the computer, waiting for the target to leave her tent.

Eve wondered what Villanelle would be doing in preparation if Eve wasn’t there. How did she usually gear up for a kill? Was she usually this tense and relaxed all at once? She was calm, collected, ready. The second that Villanelle noticed movement, she shot up and tucked the knife into her back pocket, covering her ass with her shirt.

“Don’t wait up” she smirked, and Eve looked at her, not sure if she should wish her good luck. There was every chance this wouldn’t go to Villanelle’s lack-of-a-plan plan. Before she could ponder it, Villanelle was gone.

It took only moments of consideration before curiosity got the best of Eve and she slid out of the tent after Villanelle. She glanced around and spotted the woman in the near dark. She was already far ahead of her and Eve’s legs picked up the pace to catch up with her a little. The glow of Villanelle’s mobile phone told her that she was still using it to hunt Sigrid down. Villanelle eventually disappeared amongst the group of people, the crowd only growing thicker the closer they got towards the stage. Eve pushed through, keeping an eye on Villanelle’s head as the distance grew between them. She could hardly believe she was risking her own life, and for what?

Eve stood amongst the dancing crowd, watching Villanelle as she stopped and paid for a plastic cup full of beer, taking a long gulp as her eyes scanned the crowd. Eve watched her as she visibly relaxed, following her gaze to Sigrid who was dancing and having fun with her friends. She manoeuvred her way further through the crowd so that she could get a better view of Villanelle’s face, her body involuntarily moving rhythmically as a result of the sweaty bodies that pressed and danced around her.

Villanelle looked menacing, she thought. Vacant stare, staring right at the target. Eve felt a pang of jealousy in her chest and chastised herself. Sigrid was younger than her, and she was pretty, and Villanelle looked captivated by her. Eve pressed her lips together as she watched, partly glad that Villanelle was too caught up in her job that she hadn’t noticed her presence.

Villanelle’s teeth bit down into her lower lip as she drank her beer and pretended, for a moment, to pay attention to whatever, whoever was on stage. Eve thought she might bottle it, it was taking so long, Villanelle slowly edging towards her, dancing around her, admiring her, gearing herself up. Predator and its pray, entirely Villanelle’s style. How she hadn’t grown impatient already, Eve had no idea, almost wanting to step forward herself, apprehend the weapon from Villanelle and do it herself, just so that Villanelle would gaze at her with that same, hungry look. She was sure that denying her the kill would anger her to no end.

Instead, she waited, and she watched Villanelle.

Villanelle was so calm, her eyes wandering for a second when she noticed an attractive dark-haired woman pass by, quickly gathering herself and giving her attention back to Sigrid.

Eve was pleased to see Villanelle’s self-control give out, the thrumming of the bass matching the thrumming in her chest as the younger woman stalked forward. Her hand reached into her back pocket, the weapon concealed in her hand as she walked right up behind the woman, her eyes darkening in anticipation.

It was obvious that something caught Villanelle’s attention and she hesitated for a moment. Eve tried to follow her gaze, soon realising that it was directed at her. The flash of surprise in her eyes was unmistakable and Eve wondered, panicked, thinking that the look in her own eyes must have been similar. Her lips fell open, her eyes wide as she watched Villanelle continue forward, eyes torn between both the target and Eve.

The short reprieve had been enough for Sigrid to feel eyes on her, to get a sense of something that was coming because she turned around and faced Villanelle. Eve watched her eyes widen in surprise, a gasp leaving her lips as she watched Villanelle sweep her up, engulf her in a hug of sorts and plunge a knife deep into her neck, in her carotid artery to be exact. Even in the dark, Eve could make out the blood that seeped on to Villanelle’s hand, the splatter on her cheek and her shoulder. It reminded her of Raymond.

Her heart palpitated in her chest as time seemingly stood still. She watched, ignored those around her that were enjoying the music and watched as Sigrid fell into Villanelle, choking out a cough as her legs buckled, Villanelle smirking at her over the woman’s shoulder as she allowed her to fall to her knees, retracting the knife from her neck, winking to Eve as she walked off wordlessly in the other direction. Eve, stunned, heard a ringing in her ears as she watched the target collapse to the ground, being trampled by the crowd before anyone else even registered what had happened.

Eve’s eyes followed Villanelle until she disappeared from sight, watching as people started to pay attention, dragging Sigrid up from the ground and gasping at the deep gash to her neck. How hadn’t they seen? Eve felt sorry for them, really, they hadn’t got to witness it first-hand. She felt both sick and excited, seeing people become emotional over the lifeless body, watching moments longer before heading back in the direction of the tent.

On autopilot, she dragged her fingers through her hair, her heart racing in her chest as she slipped back in beneath the sheets. It was akin to an adrenaline rush, but it was more intense, and she wondered briefly whether she might have a heart attack. Her body was shaking head to toe, and she felt cold, trying to warm up beneath the sheets.

Villanelle wasn’t anywhere in sight, and Eve worried for her against her own wishes. She sat up, teeth clattering, waiting for the woman to return.

It was hours before she did, all cleaned up, but hot and sweaty as though she had spent the whole night dancing amongst the crowd. Her hair stuck to her forehead as she peeled off her clothes right in front of Eve, leaving herself in nothing but a pair of panties as she slid in beside her beneath the sheets.

The younger woman stared at her, eyes hungry, daring, excited. Eve was sure that her own looked similar. “Are you okay?” she asked Villanelle, resisting the urge to look down at her bare skin.

“Yes, are you?” Villanelle asked her, the suggestion behind the words almost too much for Eve to bear. She had shamelessly done what she vowed never to do, watched Villanelle kill and somehow managed to get her own pleasure from it. Her whole body felt on fire.

“Yes,” she whispered, eyes not leaving Villanelle’s as the woman settled down against the pillows, her own body shaking.

“Good. Goodnight” the younger woman said, wild eyes boring into Eve’s.

“Yes, goodnight” Eve confirmed, turning over to face away from Villanelle, knowing that if she had, had a bad night of sleep before, then this would be worse tenfold. Sighing, she tried to clam her antsy body, tried not to think about the woman beside her and how badly she wanted to scream her admiration for her in this specific moment.

Fighting the urge, she forced herself to sleep, feeling the body drift closer to her in her slumber.


	6. Hamburg

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm back again with the longest chapter thus far. Your comments, as always, are very encouraging and motivate me to keep the updates coming as quickly as I can manage, so please keep them coming!! Enjoy.

Eve’s sleep was restless. Her eyes may have been closed, her breathing laboured, but her mind was busier than ever. She mulled over the look on Sigrid’s face, the one that had suggested that she knew her death was imminent. It haunted her all night and the thought branched off into other thoughts as she recalled every detail of the evening. Her heart raced in her chest, persistent, reminding her that she was alive, more alive than ever most likely. Was the adrenaline that still coursed through her veins the reason that Villanelle had danced her way into the early hours? Did she need to be completely exhausted to shut off from what had happened?

Eve was disappointed in herself, that she had given in to the gratification of the kill. It had felt so satisfying, and she hadn’t even really done anything. She wasn’t an active participant, but she had considered making herself one for a brief second. She had enjoyed it, albeit from the sidelines and the thought brought on so much shame and guilt that even in her subconscious she felt sick to her stomach.

Turning over, she faced away from Villanelle again, plagued with the images of her face when she had plunged the knife into Sigrid’s neck. Hungry, lustful, feral, dangerous – and it had been aimed at Eve and despite it all, she was laid there beside her as though she wasn’t capable of making Eve meet the same end.

Her eyes squeezed closed as she tried to succumb to sleep entirely, switch her brain off for five seconds. She tried to ignore the fact that the deflating mattress was pushing the both of them closer and closer together until they dropped down into the middle, sides pressed against one another, packed close together like sardines. Villanelle was still throughout the night, for the most part, Eve realising that the woman must still be facing away from her. She couldn’t feel the young woman’s soft breath prickle the back of her neck as Niko’s once had, and she was sad, in the moment, for the distance between them.

She knew that the advantage she had gained over Villanelle had fallen through the second that she stepped out of the tent and decided to follow her. She was her own undoing, rather than Villanelle this time, and it was due to a complete lack of self-control. For years she had wondered what Villanelle was like before and after a kill. Eve had seen her kill, but she hadn’t ever seen her carry out a hit, it had always been a spur of the moment thing, no time to get excited beforehand. She hadn’t been disappointed by Villanelle but was disappointed in herself for the feelings that it had roused in her chest. Muted feelings, but definite feelings of lust and care and longing for the woman. She would fight them, as she had before, but she had been thrown back in time to Berlin and London and Rome and the feelings of pure admiration for the woman, for her creativity, for her precision. She was good at her job, and that had always inspired certain feelings in Eve.

She hated Villanelle, god she hated her, and she wished more than anything that she could proclaim with total honesty that the evening hadn’t changed anything. But it had, it had changed everything. It had given Villanelle power over her and was an open invitation for them to continue together on their descent to hell. Eve had shown an interest, and she feared that it would be all that Villanelle would need to drag her down with her.

Half asleep, she wondered where Villanelle had put the knife and thought for a millisecond that she should find it and use it to put an end to it once and for all. It was the only way that this thing between them would ever be completely over, she was sure. Villanelle had to cease to exist for Eve to push her out of her mind.

Her sleep deepened eventually, and the next time she had a conscious thought it was one of panic when the bed suddenly dipped, Villanelle falling towards her, into her shoulder, uttering a quiet “shit” under her breath, right into her ear.

She opened her eyes and looked around, disorientated, blinking as her eyes adjusted to the sudden burst of light. Villanelle was beside her, freshly showered and dressed in jean shorts with a white shirt French tucked into the front of them. Heavy boots completed the look and Villanelle’s damp hair sat in a top-knot bun on her head.

Eve stopped looking her over, distracted by the stare the woman was directing at her. Her face was expressionless, and the intensity of the gaze made her push her face back into the pillow. She tried her hardest to push away from the woman, create some distance between them, Villanelle copying her to balance out the weight enough so that they wouldn’t fall into each other again. “I am sorry for waking you” Villanelle’s voice was barely above a whisper as she watched Eve with a quiet caution. It was clear that neither of them knew what to expect from the other right now.

The shower had obviously washed away the events of the previous evening, an almost shy smile gracing Villanelle’s lips, a real apology. Did the woman want to talk about it? Eve didn’t, and she made that known silently by breaking their eye contact. “It’s okay… how does this even happen?” she struggled against the mattress that seemed hell-bent on bringing them together again. “Did you puncture it? To get close to me?” Eve looked up at Villanelle, a sleepy smile on her face. She wasn’t flirting.

Villanelle’s eyebrows were raised, surprised by Eve’s confidence, “You wish, Eve Polastri”.

-

They drove back to the city in dead silence. Eve was still processing, and Villanelle didn’t want to push, not like last time, she wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. Dancing around each other as they packed up the room, Eve tried to get out of her own head, tried not to disappear so far into herself like she had last time, mustering up a smile when Villanelle regarded her with genuine concern.

No words were spoken between them, but they shuffled into the elevator, checked out and made their way to the airport. Eve’s eyes were trained out of the window for a time, but then she looked down and watched Villanelle’s hand shift the gearstick. She wore a ring on her thumb, her nails were well-manicured, it seemed impossible that Villanelle literally got her hands dirty for a living. If there had been any blood on her hands or in her nailbeds, it was long washed away. Villanelle caught her watching and so she looked away.

They were seated beside one another on the plane, Villanelle graciously gesturing for her to take the window seat. She curled up in it and smiled at the woman. Villanelle sat beside her and raised an eyebrow at her. “You okay?” she asked. It was cautious but casual all the same.

Villanelle was being considerate, and Eve thought that if she had been more like _this_ in Rome – cautious, careful, quiet, less excited – then things could have ended up very differently. On this occasion, Eve had made a choice without being manipulated, and with her agency intact, she felt better about the satisfaction it had brought.

“Yes” she assured the woman, but it came out like a long, drawn-out sigh. It wasn’t unsure, but it was tired, Eve was tired. She looked around at anyone that may be listening in to their conversation before looking directly at the woman again. “I thought about stabbing you to death last night” she whispered and paid close attention to Villanelle’s face, wanting to gauge her reaction. The young woman tilted her head to the side and eyed her from beneath long eyelashes. She laughed, and Eve laughed too, rubbing her hands over her face.

“Why didn’t you do it?” Villanelle was smiling at her. Eve was betraying herself once again, handing more of the power that she had acquired over the past few days over to Villanelle on a silver platter – but it was her choice, and she liked making choices.

She shrugged. “I don’t know, Villanelle… I’m not capable”.

Villanelle offered a weak smile, she seemed unconvinced and scared all at once. It was obvious that she didn’t know how to act around Eve right now, what to ask, what to say. She looked beyond Eve for a moment whilst she pondered it, disappearing into her own head. Wide hazels eventually met her eyes again, the smile brightening decisively. It wasn’t a genuine smile, Eve could tell. “We both know that isn’t true” she uttered. There was no malice behind it like there had been in the past, Villanelle was just being honest, still sounding sassy though. Eve smiled because it felt good not to be underestimated by her, felt good that there was someone else in this world that knew exactly what she was capable of.

Eve sighed, shook her head, her smile dropping to a frown. “Not easily, not like you can”.

Villanelle took time to process that. Eve saw the difference in her, how she had changed the way in which she communicated with her now. It was more thoughtful. Eve appreciated it. She nodded, “but you could if you had to”. Villanelle’s fingers absentmindedly reached out for Eve, traced the freckles on her arms, feather-light touch that sent shivers down her spine.

“If I had to” she nodded in agreement, her own hand reaching for Villanelle’s and dragging it away from her skin, holding it for a second longer than necessary.

Villanelle didn’t bother assuring her that she wouldn’t have to, and that was the clearest indication that if there had ever been any trust between them, it had been broken entirely. Although no words were exchanged, Eve thought that it was the most honest Villanelle had ever been with her.

-

They decided to part ways at the airport, the both of them exhausted. Eve mentioned that she would call Mikael and let him know that things had gone smoothly and that they would both report to the office in the morning for a debrief. She’d watched Villanelle disappear down the sidewalk, her suitcase trailing behind her, free hand pushed into her jean pocket and she had sighed. They were apart now, and theoretically, she should be able to breathe finally, but Villanelle was still all over her like a rash, Eve felt crushed by the weight of Villanelle’s presence around her.

She remembered the days long ago when she’d return home to Niko, unable to think of anything but Villanelle. She had wished every day for a new case, a new clue, new lead, new location. She’d try and try to get her off of her mind, and had somewhat succeeded since the shooting, but after today and the tender moment that they had shared, and the night before and how electrifying it had felt, Eve wasn’t sure she’d ever succeed at getting the woman off of her mind again.

She trudged down to the metro and daydreamed about her bathtub and her bed and the cigarettes she knew she’d left on the coffee table. She hadn’t smoked since leaving for Budapest and craved one as though it would keep her alive rather than slowly kill her. She would chain smoke them, she decided, and she would agonise over each and every detail of the past few days.

She did just that. After a long, hot bath she laid naked on her bed, puffing away on a cigarette, remembering how Villanelle had been almost naked beside her just hours ago. The woman was so confident, so unashamed, so beautiful. She hated herself for thinking it. Laying back against the headboard, she thought about all of it, tried to reconcile her morals with her fascination at the whole thing, each and every moment, and her hand slipped down between her bare thighs.

Shame did wash over her after she had worked herself up into a frenzy. It wasn’t the first time that she had used Villanelle whilst masturbating, but it had been long enough that she felt guilty for it again. Her heart was beating quickly in her chest, she could hear it in her ears as she came down for her orgasm. She imagined that it was Villanelle’s that she was listening to and allowed herself to fall asleep.

-

Mikael had been more than jovial when they reunited with him the following day. He had laughed boisterously and taken one of their hands in each of his, dubbing them the dream time. Eve had become defensive immediately. “Oh, really I did nothing” she had insisted, ignoring the smirk that Villanelle shot at her, watching her push her hands into her pockets. Her hair was pulled away from her face in boxer braids and exposed her long neck and the deep purple mark by her throat. She hoped that Mikael didn’t think that it was her doing.

“Then I don’t need to pay you?” Mikael’s voice interrupted her and pulled her attention away from Villanelle. He produced two envelopes full of cash, Villanelle grabbing hers immediately, a smile spreading across her face. It was a hefty paycheck for her, as she hadn’t been paid for the Budapest job yet either.

Eve eyed her own, reaching for it and frowning when it was retracted. “There’s another job” Mikael directed his words at Eve. “In Germany this time” he finished. Eve tried not to take it personally that he was talking to her specifically, knowing that it was because he knew Villanelle would go without question. It was as though he was silently asking how things had gone between them, just how much would Eve protest.

Not much, it turned out. “We’re tired Mikael, I’ll want a break soon, she’s a handful,” Eve said in jest, a smug smile on her face. She was tired, and their distance had given her perspective and she knew it would be her downfall to be around Villanelle constantly.

“I’m more than a handful” Villanelle gasped in mock offence. Eve rolled her eyes.

“Will I… return back to the office to work soon?” Eve asked, missing the investigating almost as much as she wanted to keep more distance between them both.

“Well, why fix something that isn’t broken, huh? Things seem to be good between you, better… you could be a good team”. Mikael seemed excited at the prospect, Eve less so. It was dangerous.

“It was supposed to be a short-term thing though…” Eve eyed Villanelle and now she really did look offended. “I just… feel unproductive” she tried to explain. “I just think that maybe I would like to be more involved with investigating, if I can” Eve finished, not wanting Villanelle to feel as though it was personal against her. She didn’t want to make a complete enemy out of her again.

“Well, I’m sure we can find some work to send you with” Mikael nodded in agreement. “I don’t expect you to sit and stare at her all day every day” he laughed, but Eve didn’t. It was what she had been doing for the past few days essentially. Villanelle looked at her sheepishly and she quickly averted her gaze back to Mikael.

She nodded, it was apprehensive, but Mikael accepted it and briefed them on the Germany case. It was a lower down associate of the Twelve, but they were wanting to send a message that no one was safe, distract them from protecting the higher-ups by having them turn their attention to the lower-downs. The job promised to be more physical for Villanelle because the target was a trained assassin. Infinitely more dangerous, Eve thought, and she considered that she would sit that one out. She didn’t want to feel like she had no choice but to ‘protect’ Villanelle again, and also didn’t want to see her get hurt.

The flight to Hamburg was quiet. Villanelle took the window seat that time, giving Eve a perfect view of the bruise on her neck, and she hated the fact that she was jealous about it. It was from Zosia, no doubt.

She thought long and hard about the fact that when her own hand had snaked down between her legs, the woman most likely had someone else’s between hers. Villanelle made a joke about Eve not having much to say this time, and she glared vaguely in her direction.

-

That evening, Eve was sat cross-legged on the bed, surrounded by files that had been retrieved from keepers that she assumed had been assassinated already, by Villanelle or others. Mikael had assigned her with the task of going over them with a fine-tooth comb to identify any new persons of interest.

One hand detangled her curls, the other toyed with her lower lip as she read over sentences over and over until they became a blur, looked over pictures until she couldn’t quite make them out anymore. She felt eyes on her again and her frustration reached its limit. 

“Do you not have work of your own to be getting on with?”.

Her tone of voice was cold, and she didn’t quite look Villanelle in the eye. She didn’t need to see Villanelle’s physical reaction to her words and almost grimaced when she saw the woman’s shoulders tense, her whole body stiffening, her expression turning blank.

“I do not like it when you are rude to me, Eve… it is not very nice” Villanelle said, calmer than expected. “I can see that you are angry and if you have a problem then we should talk about it”.

Eve looked at her in disbelief. This surely wasn’t the same woman that she had known. This Villanelle was almost reasonable, but Eve felt as though she was beyond reasoning, and all because she couldn’t control the feelings of jealousy about a pathetic mark on her neck.

“I’m not in the mood for you right now, Villanelle” Eve warned, leaning back when Villanelle moved to the edge of her bed, resting her elbows on her knees and leaning towards Eve. She frowned when she realised that Villanelle was smirking.

“So… if you are not in the mood for me right now, would you mind telling me when you _are_ in the mood for me, Eve? I expect that would be very enjoyable for the both of us” Villanelle teased her, her voice low, the corner of her mouth twitched up into a smile. If she weren’t so annoyed, she might have been aroused by the suggestion in Villanelle’s words, but she was annoyed and so she scoffed instead, shaking her head at the young woman.

“Right, I’m not sure your girlfriend would be very happy about that” she shot back, the power she had possessed drained to nought and shifted back to Villanelle whose smirk widened as she got closer to her, invading her personal space.

“You are jealous, Eve, and it is not a good look on you,” she told her, stroking her fingers up against Eve’s cheek, brushing her wild curls behind her ear.

Eve didn’t have a comeback, not even having it in her to deny it, batting Villanelle’s hand away and glaring at her.

Villanelle smirked and that was her undoing. “Would you stop trying to inflict yourself upon me, for five minutes?” she asked, exasperated. Villanelle laughed at that.

“Wow, Eve. Inflict myself?” Villanelle asked, the amusement evident in her voice. “I haven’t done anything, it’s not my fault if you’re _wanting_ me to and misinterpreting”.

Eve’s groan was loud, and her movements exaggerated as she flung herself back against the headboard. “What am I doing here?” she asked aloud.

“Working?” Villanelle proffered, cautious, unsure.

“No, I mean what am I _doing_ here? Doing this shit again? Being around _you_ again?” she asked, looking at Villanelle then, decisively calm, she wanted another perspective, some insight.

“I don’t know” Villanelle shrugged. The way she said it reminded Eve of London, sitting on Villanelle’s bed.

_“You said you don’t want anything, you don’t like anything, that you’re bored, do you mean it?”_

_“I don’t know”._

“Perhaps because you are paid to do it, and because they didn’t give you much choice?” Villanelle asked, trying to be helpful at least.

Eve shook her head adamantly. “But why am I doing it, who am I even doing it for? I’m not scared of dying anymore, if I didn’t want to do it, I would just let them kill me?” she looked at Villanelle, searching her eyes for answers that she couldn’t, wouldn’t ever find there.

“Maybe it is that you are still interested in it? In me?” Villanelle asked, Eve glaring at her then. That wasn’t it.

“Who do we work for?” Eve’s anger about the bruise on Villanelle’s neck had culminated in an existential crisis of sorts. Questions and thoughts and feelings that had manifested within her for months finally reached the surface.

“I don’t know, Eve” Villanelle sounded sympathetic, or guilty to Eve and she looked at her, really looked at her.

“Yes, you do” she argued.

“I don’t, and it doesn’t matter to me”. Eve considered that for a second and it made sense to her. Villanelle’s conscience and moral compass weren’t the reason she assassinated for the Four after all.

“Why are you doing it then?” Eve asked curiously and couldn’t have missed the sigh that left Villanelle’s lips as she leaned back, away from Eve a little.

“For the money, first and foremost… and also because the Twelve tried to kill me many times before” Villanelle looked sad all of a sudden “and they made us hate each other” she finished, looking at Eve almost nervously.

Eve was surprised on all accounts bar the first, her eyebrows raising. Anger was her initial reaction, but it settled quickly into a sadness that mirrored Villanelle’s. “No… we did that,” she told Villanelle.

“And by we, you mean I did that?” Villanelle asked.

Eve didn’t offer a response. It wasn’t one-sided, not really, but mostly Eve refused to acknowledge her part to play. Not reciprocating the feelings Villanelle’s thought she had for her didn’t warrant the bullet that had found its way into her side.

“How do we know we’re on the right side?” she asked instead, Villanelle leaning in towards her again.

“We don’t, Eve… no matter who we work for, no one can be trusted. I’ve told you before that if you go high enough, it’s all the same people. We just do the dirty work, make sure that powerful people become more powerful by eliminating the competition.” Villanelle explained, and it finally started to make sense. “Like Tonya Harding did with Nancy Kerrigan in figure skating… I saw that Tonya movie on a plane recently” Villanelle smiled brightly, it was cute, and her childlike excitement caught Eve’s attention for a moment.

“I don’t want to make powerful people more powerful” Eve argued.

“Neither do I… I want revenge and I want to be paid whilst getting it,” Villanelle said, a smirk working its way on to her face.

“Revenge on the Twelve? For trying to kill you?”.

Villanelle shrugged casually “Yes, and on MI6, for their part to play” she explained, really catching Eve’s attention then. “Let’s say that I am working on an investigation of my own” Villanelle said, not elaborating but raising her eyebrows at Eve suggestively.

Eve had so much to think about and remained quiet for a moment.

“Where did you go?” she asked, tilting her head to one side, needing to know what had become of Villanelle in their time apart.

“I was around” Villanelle shrugged, it was non-committal.

“Where?” Eve pushed, not caring anymore about the power struggle, just needing to know.

“Around Eve, London sometimes” she shrugged, figuring that, that was what Eve wanted to know most of all and she wasn’t wrong.

Eve nodded, not knowing if it was wrong to feel sad that Villanelle hadn’t ever come to her.

“I can’t believe that the Twelve don’t know that it is you behind these kills yet” she laughed, regarding the files again finally.

Villanelle looked at her curiously then and shook her head. “Of course, they know, Eve, my DNA is all over the place” she reminded her, as though it should have been obvious to her.

Eve’s eyebrows knitted together in confusion. “Then why haven’t they retaliated? Sent someone for you, or for me even?” she asked.

Villanelle shrugged “I don’t know Eve, but I know that they are watching, and I am prepared for them to come, whenever they do” she assured her.

Eve was almost irritated that Villanelle was only telling her this now, her life had been in danger this whole time without even realising.

She regarded Villanelle with a look of concern. “Should I be worried?” she worried her bottom lip between her teeth.

“You should always be worried, Eve, after everything,” she told her, sounding serious and as though she wanted to ensure that Eve understood.

She nodded her understanding, her heart racing in her chest. She would have to keep her ear to the ground, be extra vigilant now that she knew.

“What will you do, how will you do it?” Eve asked in rapid succession, flooded with so many thoughts and theories and questions right then.

“I will kill them all Eve, eventually. I will take all of their money and then I will kill them all” she assured her. “It doesn’t matter how, but what matters is that you shouldn’t follow me again,” Villanelle told her, dead serious.

Eve wanted to ask why more than anything, hoping Villanelle would offer up the information before she had to.

She didn’t.

“Why?” she was quiet, turning her body so that she was facing the young woman.

“It doesn’t matter why, Eve. But it is important to me that I am able to talk to these people… you know, before the time comes… and I am afraid that you will not much like the ways in which I get them talking” she explained, keeping it vague, Eve’s mind going crazy.

She reluctantly nodded in response.

-

True to her word, she didn’t follow Villanelle that evening when she left the hotel room. She went weaponless and when Eve questioned the decision, Villanelle reminded her that it wasn’t technically go time, it was just her doing her research, getting her bearings, figuring the target out. She knew she wasn’t supposed to leave Villanelle unattended until it was time for her to actually carry out the hit, but she had a lot to process, and the fear of dying at the hand of another assassin led her to wave Villanelle off once she had dressed up in her disguise. This time a brunette wig, a pair of glasses and clothes that Villanelle would usually find absolutely hideous.

Eve wondered if she might steal the shirt once Villanelle was done with it.

Hours passed, and Eve tried not to grow concerned, trying to pay attention to the television. She was amused most by the advertisements where the German language had been dubbed over advertisements filmed in English for both British and American audiences. She laughed at how their words didn’t match up to the movement of their lips even slightly.

It was almost midnight when she was distracted by a thud on the other side of the door. She hadn’t really been expecting Villanelle back at any specific time, but it caught her off guard nevertheless.

Caught up in the conversations they had had earlier, she cautiously pressed against the door and looked out through the spyhole. No one was there and she frowned, fear creeping up on her and she whipped around as if sensing a presence behind her. There was nothing there.

As she peered out of the spyhole, she heard another weak knock against the wood and frowned at her inability to see anything. It didn’t look as though there was anyone there.

She heard sliding against the wood on the other side and a squeak that she could have sworn was Villanelle saying her name.

She was nervous though, after their conversation earlier and almost didn’t dare to open the door. But she was curious, and Villanelle _had_ been gone for a long time.

Slowly but surely, she pushed down on the handle, hearing the door click open as she pulled it towards her to peer out of it just slightly. The force against it pushed it right into her though and a beaten Villanelle fell into the room.

“Oh” she gasped, stood looking down at Villanelle who was holding her ribs, bleeding profusely from cuts and grazes to her face, and what looked to be a bloody nose. “Oh my god, Vill,” she said instantaneously, dropping down beside the young woman. “What happened?” she asked, one of the woman’s eyes swollen almost shut.

Villanelle took a gasping breath, as though it hurt to breathe and looked up at Eve with her one good eye. “Took me by surprise” was all she said, her other eye falling closed. She was exhausted, Eve could tell.

“Oh,” she said simply, moving behind her, hooking her arms under Villanelle’s and struggling to pull her further into the room, the door closing as soon as Villanelle was no longer propping it open. “Oh god,” she said, kneeling beside her once more. “I… where does it hurt? How are you hurt? Oh, tell me what to do” she pleaded, growing more and more panicked by the second.

Villanelle opened her eye again and regarded her curiously, apparently bewildered by Eve’s panic and obvious concern. “Just um… help me get up, to um, to the bed?” she asked hopefully, Eve nodding and gently helping Villanelle to sit up, being patient as she hissed and groaned through the pain, eventually helping Eve to pull herself up from the floor.

She leaned right against Eve, limping her way to the bed, allowing Eve to help her into it. “I need help to undress,” she told Eve. There was no suggestion, no innuendo, only a genuine plea for help. “My ribs, I think they are broken” she explained.

Eve nodded, pushing the displaced wig all of the way off of Villanelle’s head, smoothing down the bun that perched on her head without thinking. She was grateful for the loose fit of the clothing that Villanelle was wearing, knowing that anything more figure-hugging and flattering and Villanelle’s style would have been harder to get her out of.

She manoeuvred the shirt up over her head, throwing it down on the floor and watching as Villanelle reached back, in spite of the pain, to unclasp her bra. She threw it and gasped out a sigh of relief, falling gently back against the pillows. It wasn’t the time for Eve to ogle her, but she couldn’t help herself from admiring her for just a second, eyes moving from perky breasts down to bruised ribs.

“Oh, Villanelle,” she said, the horror evident on her face as she took in the woman’s injuries.

“My pants” Villanelle offered as a response, Eve nodding and pushing aside the sheets to pull the pants down her legs, discarding them like she had the shirt.

“What should I do?” she asked the young woman, not sure whether she should focus on her bruised ribs or bloody face.

“Ice, I need ice on them,” Villanelle said through gritted teeth as she shifted back to make herself more comfortable against the pillows, cursing beneath her breath.

“Okay” Eve nodded, getting up quickly, rushing out of the room with the ice bucket in hand, filling it to the brim from the ice machine located just down the hall.

On her return, she noticed that Villanelle had managed to retrieve one of the shots of vodka from the refrigerator below her nightstand, and had downed it in one, throwing the empty bottle to the floor. She grabbed a fresh towel, packing it with ice, rolling it up and walking to the woman, laying it as gently as she could against her ribs.

“I’m sorry!” she exclaimed when Villanelle howled out in pain, reaching down to readjust the towel accordingly.

“Thank you” she muttered, her breathing laboured, Eve simply nodding at her.

She reached into the fridge for another vodka shot and walked to her suitcase, pulling out some of the cotton pads she used for make-up removal and dousing them in the alcohol. She apologised in advance before pressing the cotton against the cut on her cheek, the biggest of them all. Villanelle cried out and batted her hand away, reaching for the remainder of the shot and knocking it back.

“I have to clean them,” Eve said softly, pushing Villanelle’s hand away and continuing on, mopping up the blood and dirt and sweat despite Villanelle’s curses and complaints. “There,” she said, satisfied when Villanelle was no longer bleeding from the small cuts on her face, Villanelle letting out a pleased sigh that the ordeal was finally over.

“What happened?” she tried again, sitting beside Villanelle on the bed.

“Ambushed, either she was expecting me, or she spotted me.” Villanelle said, pausing to take another deep breath. “… I had no weapon but managed to steal her knife. We were fighting” another long breath “and she wasn’t getting tired” another breath “but eventually I managed to pin her down… the neck again, it’s becoming my signature move” Villanelle said, her tone of voice rather subdued but she mustered a laugh, as did Eve.

“Well done” Eve said simply, her hand reaching for Villanelle’s cheek like a reflex, stroking it sympathetically.

“It hurt,” Villanelle said, her lower lip protruding out in a pout, a pout that Eve was almost tempted to kiss away.

“I know, I’m sorry… tell me what I can do?” she asked of the younger woman who seemed to lean into the hand on her face.

“Stay in my bed tonight, please?” Villanelle asked, her voice seeming to deepen in spite of everything.

“No” Eve laughed, shaking her head at the young woman,

“Yes,” Villanelle argued back, eyebrows furrowing, puppy dog eyes looking right at Eve.

The last shred of self-control left her body and she sighed “Okay”.

She shuffled the sheets again and slid beneath them, laying next to her but not touching her, just watching.

She didn’t protest though when the woman reached for her hand and gave it a light squeeze.


	7. Home (is where the heart is)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys!! Thank you so much for all of the support. The comments and the kudos really do make my day. This chapter has terrorised me, honestly, I felt like I just wasn't doing it justice, so I'm sorry about the delay. I hope you enjoy!!

Eve groaned, fighting back against Villanelle who was trying to apprehend her, perched on the edge of the bed, grasping Eve’s wrists almost painfully. It was almost impressive, seeing as she was nursing broken ribs and painful bruises across her body, but Eve was getting impatient. “Villanelle stop” she complained, though couldn’t help but laugh when the woman’s grip loosened, watching her clutch her chest as she worked through a particularly sharp pain before reaching for her again. Eve was breathless too by now, “would you… stop being so stubborn” she pleaded, still laughing as she tried time and time again to throw a hoodie over Villanelle’s head. The woman pouted up at her and pushed her face into Eve’s stomach, obviously having grown tired quickly in her weakened state, but not quite ready to give up. She groaned in pain as she reached her arms around Eve’s waist, but it was apparently worth it to avoid the offensive garment.

“Get that _thing_ away from me” she hissed against the fabric of Eve’s shirt, Eve feeling the warmth of her breath permeating the thin material and kissing her skin. She tried to ignore the fact that it made her feel things – good, warm things. She forced herself to remember that no matter how cute and charming Villanelle appeared right now, whilst she _needed_ her, the woman was deadly and had caused her so much pain in the past and was still causing her pain to a certain degree, all pain that she wouldn’t ever be able to get over.

She. Couldn’t. Fall. For. It.

This whole scenario was overfamiliar, should have been uncomfortable and she struggled with the feeling of wishing that there wasn’t the barrier of cotton between them so that she could feel that warm breath and them soft lips against her bare skin.

She. Couldn’t. Fall. For. It.

She laughed harder, her fingers working their way into the honey blonde locks, tugging her head back almost painfully and throwing the hoodie over her head with her free hand. Villanelle cried out, displeased more at the fact that she was wearing a hoodie that depicted a dancing man and spelt out the slogan ‘floss like a boss’ than she was at the pain that emanated from every part of her body. Eve took a step back, pleased with herself.

“You are _so_ kinky,” Villanelle said, looking up at her, arms still wrapped around her waist. Eve rolled her eyes and pushed her off.

“And you look _so_ cute” she teased, squeezing her cheek, Villanelle gasping as Eve reopened the cut there. Eve watched blood reach the surface of her skin and trickle down the side of her face. She felt powerful, and not as guilty about it as she knew she should.

“You are very dangerous, Eve… it is very sexy” Villanelle said, almost teasing her, her eyes widening in surprise as she reached her hand up to wipe away the blood with the back of her hand, pouting up at her again.

Eve smoothed down Villanelle’s hair and reciprocated her pout, growing slightly concerned when the woman’s eyebrows knitted together, and she became pale. She was sceptical, Villanelle was so manipulative, and she didn’t know whether the young woman, in the absence of physical strength was using her mental strength to control her. “You okay?” she asked quietly, her voice soft as she watched Villanelle stare off into the distance, reaching for her shoulders to get her attention again.

Villanelle shook her head, eyes full of tears and Eve panicked. “Oh god, I’m sorry… where does it hurt? I told you that you need to see a doctor” Eve crouched down beside her so that she was at the woman’s eye level, centring herself so that she didn’t look overly concerned.

“It hurts everywhere, Eve… it is so itchy” Villanelle said, her bottom lip actually quivering as she pulled the material away from her skin. Eve looked at her, stunned and then scoffed, getting up and shaking her head at the younger woman.

“Do not tell me that you are about to cry over an _item of clothing_ , Villanelle… god, you’re so dramatic” Eve rolled her eyes, knowing that she shouldn’t have expected anything else from the woman. “And you’re an asshole,” she said, walking around to her own bed and making herself comfortable on top of it, trying to get some more work done.

Her fingers absentmindedly flicked through the case files, her eyes trained on the pages but taking absolutely nothing in. She tried, reminding herself to focus, but fell into thoughts of the woman laid up on the bed beside her again and again.

They’d inevitably grown closer overnight, pressed close together, Eve tending to her wounds and making sure that she was comfortable. It was almost like she had been trying to redeem herself after Paris, nursing the woman back to health like she might have back then given the chance. She wasn’t sorry, but she did have an underlying feeling of guilt that she wasn’t sure she would ever shake, no matter how many times Villanelle wronged her.

They had laid awake into the early hours, Eve on her side, watching Villanelle as she took long, drawn-out breaths, shuffling against the pillows to try to find a semi-comfortable position, laying for two minutes before switching positions again. They had barely spoken, sometimes muttering incoherent thoughts under their breaths as Eve helped her to move, but nothing that made any sense, that healed the rift between them or worse, tore them further apart. She didn’t know if there would ever be a right time for them to talk about it.

She had laid there, and she had fought sleep and she had hated Villanelle with every part of her being. Hated her unimaginable amounts, but couldn’t ignore the longing in her chest, her sorrow at how the woman was hurting, the desire to care for her and hold her and make her feel better. It was the fight between her head and her heart, but one she seemingly had little to no control over.

How easy it would have been to smother her with a pillow right then, whilst she was incapacitated, powerless to help herself or fight back against her. How easy it would have been to kill her then, painlessly, almost mercifully. Villanelle deserved to die a horrible death for everything she had done, but Eve didn’t want it for her. She knew deep down that whenever the time did come if it was by her hand, someone else’s, or by some grace of God, in old age by natural causes (if by some miracle she too was still around then), then a part of her would surely die with the woman.

They were bound together by some force that was impossible to overcome – no matter how hard she tried and as she had watched the woman struggle in pain beside her, she had prayed to a God that she didn’t believe in that Villanelle really was as immortal as she seemed and that she’d never have to see the spark drain out of her eyes.

She blamed the thoughts on being sleep deprived and utterly exhausted, eventually succumbing to the feeling and falling further and further into the abyss. Her breathing had evened out, her eyes had fallen shut and her body had grown heavy. She felt Villanelle’s eyes on her still but didn’t have the energy to pull herself out of it. A hypnic jerk had soon enough though, her muscles twitching, eyes opening reluctantly. They strained in the darkness, not bothering to adjust or focus on anything. Everything had been a blur, a culmination of colours and shapes, iridescent and glistening. Villanelle’s eyes were the only thing that she had been able to see clearly.

In her state of exhaustion, she had reached out for the woman’s cheek and caressed it. “I’m sorry” she had mumbled, tired, her thumb tracing over Villanelle’s cheekbone.

As she had started to fall asleep again, she felt the woman shake her head, shuffle a little closer and whisper “go to sleep”. She had complied without another word, falling back into the feeling, her mind going blank and her hand falling from Villanelle’s face to her neck.

When she had woken early in the morning, she had blushed profusely at the placement of her hand against the woman’s neck, even more so at the woman’s state of undress. She was closer than she had ever been to the woman, her nose practically touching her shoulder, it was overwhelming.

It had been then that she had decided that she would go out and buy Villanelle some new clothes. She needed to maintain some self-control somehow, and if it meant drowning Villanelle in ugly clothes to hide her away, that was what she would do.

-

Days passed, the two of them holed up in the hotel room that had very quickly started to feel far too small. They were biding time until Villanelle was well enough to make the flight home where she would be seen by a doctor arranged by Mikael and given more time to recuperate in the comfort of her own home.

Eve had tended to Villanelle’s every need – not want, because, after a couple of days of recovery when Eve had asked what Villanelle _wanted_ from room service, the younger woman had shared that what she really _wanted_ was for Eve to sit on her face.

It had caught her off guard. It was the most blatant Villanelle had been towards her since they had reunited in Prague all of them months ago. It was the most blatant anyone had been towards her since Rome, over two years ago. Her breath had caught in her throat, her mouth dropping open in surprise and a blush had painted her cheeks.

She had changed the subject.

After the first night, Eve had insisted on sleeping in her own bed and used Villanelle’s tossing and turning and heavy breathing as an excuse – she needed a good night’s sleep, she had said. Villanelle had pouted about it all night, and Eve had almost given in.

In reality, she had needed to put some distance between them, as minute as that distance was – she was still barely an arms-length away in her separate bed. Her self-control had held out, but barely, and each passing second became a struggle, each little touch became too much, each word feeling like an innuendo.

When their room service had arrived, she had protested when Villanelle had given her that look – the look coupled with “will you help me?”. Villanelle had been convincing Eve to feed her for days, arguing that she couldn’t raise her arms without an almost paralysing pain in her chest. Eve had relented each and every time, laid on her stomach beside the woman and fed her, admiring her too, their eye contact a whole new type of intense.

“No, Villanelle… we go home this evening, and you will have to be able to feed yourself” Eve reminded her, placing her food beside her on the bed. She cut up her sausage for her, figuring that was sufficient help, rolling her eyes at the way that Villanelle looked at her as though she was some kind of monster. “Fine” she relented with a sigh, sitting down beside her on the bed and spoon-feeding her some of the mashed potatoes quickly so that the shit-eating grin couldn’t take over her face like it had every other time.

“So… I was thinking” Villanelle looked smug and Eve’s brain went into overdrive. It couldn’t be good, whatever it was, with that look on her face.

“You were?” Eve asked curiously, shoving some more potato between the woman’s lips to buy herself some time.

“Mhm” Villanelle mumbled around her mouthful, nodding as she chewed, swallowing and smiling at her again, resisting when Eve tried to feed her some more. “Why haven’t you killed me yet? You’ve had every opportunity?” Villanelle asked, Eve admiring her with a look of confusion. She was disappointed that she hadn’t tried to kill her? Or was she pleased that she hadn’t because it implied that Eve had forgiven her?

“I considered it,” Eve said simply, shovelling some more food into the woman’s mouth.

“No, you didn’t” Villanelle shot back quickly, manners out of the window as she spoke with her mouth full. She frowned at Eve, the vein protruding from her forehead again and Eve resisted the urge to smooth her thumb over it.

“I did… the first night. I thought about smothering you with a pillow” she admitted, Villanelle looking at her in disbelief. Eve cocked her head to one side “don’t you think I’m capable?” she asked, her tone of voice playful. Villanelle was giving her some of the power back unknowingly.

“That is not what I said” Villanelle pushed her bottom lip out into another pout, her tone of voice almost defensive. Eve rolled her eyes, but inside her stomach flipped. She thought that, right now, Villanelle was less femme fatale and more young ingenue and it surprised her that she found her equally as alluring, maybe even more so in her vulnerable state. It would be the case, she wouldn’t ever catch a break from the woman she was sure.

Taking a deep breath, she swallowed and tried to maintain a poker face. “You know what _you’re_ capable of though?” Eve couldn’t help the shit-eating grin that broke out on her face. Villanelle regarded her curiously, head tilted to the side as she anticipated what Eve might say. “Feeding yourself” Eve pushed the plate into Villanelle’s hands and jumped up from the bed, leaving her own food behind as she strutted off for a shower.

She undressed, smirking to herself at the sound of Villanelle’s whines from the bed. She knew, without a doubt, that Villanelle just wanted her attention and playing the helpless victim had worked for her thus far. Slipping into the shower, she tried to shake the feeling that she was sad that they would be parting ways soon enough, even though she knew it was absolutely for the best.

She hated herself for the feelings that she was having, the ones that were less than innocent.

Villanelle continued to moan and groan for the duration of her shower, and when she stepped out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel, walking towards her suitcase without a glance in the woman’s direction, Eve heard her fall dead silent.

She ignored the silence for as long as possible, turning around to find the woman ogling her. Facing away from her again, she couldn’t help but smirk. It did feel good to hold the woman’s attention again, and for Villanelle to be opening up about her desire for her once more. “Pervert” she murmured under her breath as she found an outfit suitable for the plane, turning around again when the woman remained silent.

She was surprised to find Villanelle struggling to pull herself up out of bed, walking still a bit of a struggle for her. She pointed at her, shaking her head when the woman made her way towards her. “No, Villanelle” she warned, knowing exactly the way that this was about to go, the blood draining from her face in anticipation. She didn’t mind how they would play around, but Villanelle looked serious and Eve simply couldn’t go there.

A smirk appeared on Villanelle’s lips when she recognised the nervousness on Eve’s face, stepping towards her and ignoring the obvious pain and discomfort that she was in. “It’s like you just read my mind” she spoke, her voice low, Eve shooting her a confused look. “I was just thinking… that it’s a shame that the trip is coming to an end without me seeing you as undressed as you’ve seen me” Villanelle shrugged, stepping towards her again. “Then… here you are” Villanelle’s eyes travelled down her body, Eve tightening the towel around her which only emphasised her body shape rather than protected it from the young woman’s gaze.

Eve couldn’t hide the blush on her face, looking at Villanelle in complete disbelief. “I…” she started, words failing her.

“…You?” Villanelle asked, licking over her lips, giving Eve a second before speaking again. “Are looking so sexy right now” Villanelle bit down into her plump lower lip, stepping even closer to her.

Eve narrowed her eyes and shook her head. “Villanelle,” it was another warning. “You are hardly in any fit state for anything _sexy_ , and you have a girlfriend, so back up,” she told her, squaring up to her almost, making it known that she was being deadly serious.

“You are so cute when you are nervous” Villanelle smiled, ignoring the pain as she reached for Eve’s cheeks, invading her personal space completely. Eve swallowed the lump in her throat, looking up at Villanelle in anticipation of what was to come. She really had no idea how far the woman would take this new game she was playing. “But you are right… I really am not up to it” she took a step back and Eve quickly masked the faint disappointment with a sigh of relief. There was obviously a lot of feelings that had been reignited during their time together, but now wasn’t the time to be making decisions that they couldn’t take back. When Villanelle took another step back, Eve hurriedly grabbed her clothes and rushed off to the bathroom, putting some much-needed distance between them again.

-

Eve had helped Villanelle dress for the plane, putting her in that same hoodie despite her protests and sweatpants that were probably two sizes too big for her. They had tried out some of Villanelle’s own clothes, but when they had fitted tight and constricted her chest, she had relented and allowed herself to be seen in the repugnant clothing that Eve had purchased. Eve argued that it was ‘practical’ rather than ‘repugnant’ which had led to an argument over Eve’s own fashion choices.

They had improved, somewhat, since her divorce. But she could not deny that she favoured comfort over everything else.

The young woman had grumbled about the outfit even when they were sat beside one another on the plane, her head falling snug against Eve’s shoulder. “Who are you trying to impress?” Eve had asked, really just to get her to stop talking but it backfired when Villanelle had scoffed and inched ever closer to her.

“You are right Eve, I do not need to try to impress you because you are already impressed by me” Villanelle had grinned, and Eve rolled her eyes.

“I’m often unimpressed by you too” Eve had reminded her.

-

When they landed, for the first time ever, Mikael was there to pick them up. Eve dragged along both of their suitcases whilst Villanelle hobbled beside her, actually giving in and leaning against Mikael when he wrapped his arm around her. He ignored Eve’s protests to be dropped off at her apartment before Villanelle went to visit with the doctor – an unofficial doctor, of course, seeing as it was almost 10 pm, justifying it by saying that Villanelle “might need someone to hold her hand”. Eve had huffed, glad that Villanelle and Mikael were both laughing because she definitely wasn’t.

“Do not act like you do not care how I am doing Eve” Villanelle had spoken from where she was sprawled out on the backseat, a cocky grin lighting up her features.

Eve stayed silent.

For someone that was eager not to show concern for Villanelle, Eve couldn’t stop talking once they had arrived at the doctor’s home. She sat beside Villanelle who was laid out on a couch and listed off every symptom, every course of action they had taken to make her comfortable, every activity she struggled to complete alone, every injury in great detail. She ignored the satisfied smirk on Villanelle’s face when she had detailed the dark bruising on her lower back and her backside, mumbling an indiscreet “pervert” under her breath, much like Eve had earlier that afternoon.

Eve regarded her indignantly, shaking her head and looking back towards the doctor. “The bruise on her neck is unrelated, given to her by her _girlfriend_ ” Eve informed him. It was petty really, even more so when she shot Villanelle a mocking, sarcastic smile. They were back to sparring, it seemed, the tenderness between them non-existent around others.

The doctor looked between them, gave a short laugh and shook his head, asking for Villanelle to undress so that he could check out the injuries for himself. Eve, without a beat, leaned closer to the woman to help her, just so used to it by now, blushing profusely when Villanelle raised an eyebrow at her “I can manage, Eve” she told her, barely managing but wanting to make a point. Eve nodded and looked away.

The doctor explained that there was not much he could do to help Villanelle, besides giving her some mild pain killers. He confirmed that she did have three broken ribs, but that the other injuries sustained were mainly superficial and would be healed rather quickly.

Eve was satisfied. A few weeks of Villanelle off of work meant a few weeks of Eve not being around her, and hopefully getting over whatever this had been between them. Just a blip, she assured herself, just the remnants of care and concern that had carried over from their history. She could fight it off though, she thought, with just an inch of personal space, some time apart.

“Let’s go home” Villanelle sighed, prescription in hand as they met Mikael back at the car.

“God, yes” Eve nodded in agreement, a genuine smile on her face. She missed home, and her bed, and her cigarettes, and time away from Villanelle.

“I will stop by my apartment to get some nicer clothing, and then we can go to your place” Villanelle nodded. It was with such confidence, a statement rather than a question and Eve looked at her, completely bewildered.

“Oh, no… Villanelle, absolutely not” Eve shuffled back against the seat, regarding Villanelle seriously. That was a boundary that she was not going to cross. She didn’t need Villanelle in her space, touching all of her things. She already had trouble getting the woman off of her mind when she was alone, she didn’t need the space tainted by the woman’s presence. It sounded like a death sentence. “I thought you meant going back to our individual homes” Eve explained, not wanting Villanelle to suggest that she had agreed to this, it was absurd.

“Well” Villanelle started, a smirk on her lips. “They do say that home is where the heart is” Villanelle licked over her lips and shot Eve a look, a look that did things to her, sending certain sensations down below her waistline. She rolled her eyes and shook her head.

“You act like a tough guy, Villanelle… but really you are completely hopeless” Eve told her. She’d never really realised how soft the woman could be.

Villanelle ignored her. “I have a traumatic brain injury, Eve” she reminded her counterpart, reaching her hand up to hold her head as though she was in pain. “and three broken ribs, I need help,” she said, still not asking, just telling her.

“I will end up with a traumatic brain injury if I don’t get a break from you” she scoffed, gesturing for Mikael to drive. “If you need help, you do have a girlfriend that you can ask” she reminded her, Villanelle shaking her head furiously.

“No, you see… it’s hard for her to understand these things” she tried to reason. “Without telling her what I do, it is impossible for me to explain to her why I am injured” Villanelle reminded her. It was a fair point, but it wasn’t Eve’s concern.

“No, Villanelle” Eve shook her head, catching Mikael’s eye in the rear-view mirror and shaking her head more insistently.

“Just a couple of days, Eve” he took one for the team and pleaded on Villanelle’s behalf. The woman simply smiled smugly, knowing that Eve would relent.

Perhaps if she had more self-control when it came to the woman, she would resist, she wanted to resist just to wipe the smile off of her face, but she couldn’t bring herself to disappoint her again.

She huffed, staring off out of the window so that she didn’t have to see the smize on Villanelle’s face when she gave up her protests, groaning when they pulled up at Villanelle’s apartment building and she felt her tug on her sleeve for help. “You really do take the piss,” Eve told her, annoyed that her arm had been twisted, that Villanelle never respected _her_ boundaries. She could feel her frustration mounting again now that Villanelle was selfishly failing to respect her choices.

Climbing the stairs to the apartment, she found herself growing impatient when Villanelle took them slowly, numb to her pain now that she knew she’d have the younger woman to contend with for the foreseeable future. Opening up the apartment for the woman, she let her in and followed her instructions, packing everything she asked for into a bag.

“Toys? Lube?” Villanelle asked, a smug grin on her face once she’d packed up the essentials. She was wanting to test Eve’s patience, she knew that and steeled herself.

“Maybe you should go and stay with Zosia, for real, if that’s what you want” Eve explained, putting it out there from the off that this wasn’t going to be something _more_ than Eve just helping her get back on her feet.

Villanelle nodded, obviously unconvinced if that same grin was anything to go by, leaning against Eve as they headed back to the car.

Eve wondered briefly about what state she had left her apartment in. She hadn’t had any visitors since the first time that Mikael and Jerome had shown up. She liked the lack of visitors, it meant that the space was entirely her own. Her little bubble burst when Villanelle stepped beyond the threshold and looked around, nodding to herself.

“It is nice,” she told Eve, smiling softly at her. Eve nodded and walked further into her apartment, dropping her keys onto the side and heading over towards her bedroom.

“It’s late, Villanelle… take your pain killers and I’ll get the bed set up for you” Eve said, nodding her head towards the kitchen for the woman to help herself.

She made quick work of the sheets, changing them, pulling Villanelle’s nightclothes out of her bag and laying them on the bed, pulling out blankets and such so that she could stay on the couch. “What are you doing?” Villanelle asked, leaning up against the doorframe. Eve looked at her and shrugged.

“I’m tired, I’m going to head to bed,” Eve told her, gesturing through to the living room.

Villanelle shook her head, Eve noticing how her hair had almost entirely fallen out of her bun, how the baby hairs framed her face and brought out an even more peculiar innocence in the woman. “Stay,” Villanelle said, stepping closer to her, reaching for Eve’s wrist and attempting to remove the blankets from her hand.

“No, Vill” Eve refused, the sad expression on her face mirroring Villanelle’s. It was so hard. Refusing her and disappointing her was so hard. “Goodnight,” she said, heading out to the bathroom to prepare for bed.

She took her time and tried to get her thoughts straight, tried to remain objective about this, tried to look at it as though she was just doing her job. But try as she might, she could feel herself falling back beneath the woman’s spell. She stood in front of the mirror and stared herself down and listed off in her head every time that Villanelle had hurt her, each time the woman had come into her life and destroyed it like a wrecking ball, reminded herself over and over again that she couldn’t allow it to happen again.

Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.

When she was finally dressed for bed, hair pulled into a lazy ponytail, teeth brushed, she headed in the direction of the living room and set herself up on the couch. Sitting there, she puffed away on a cigarette and tried to relax, tried to ignore the way that her whole apartment already reeked of the woman’s perfume. Villanelle’s perfume had always had her on edge. She tried not to think about the woman lying in her bed, in her sheets, right where she’d masturbated about her only days ago. It was the only reason she had bothered changing the sheets at all, unable to rest with the shame of Villanelle laying atop them same sheets she had dirtied with her filthy thoughts about the woman.

It was silent in her bedroom; the bedside lamp had been turned off and Eve figured that the woman had fallen asleep. Stubbing out her cigarette, she threw herself against the back of her couch with a sigh, head in her hands as she tried, tried not to think about her and about the fact that she was here and the fact that she was not lying beside her.

It was for the best, it was absolutely for the best, and one day she’d feel good about the decision, but it appeared that today simply wasn’t that day.

Laying her head against the pillows, she willed sleep to come and instead of counting sheep, continued to list off all of Villanelle’s wrongdoings, again and again, searing them to her brain, not allowing herself to forget.

She thought briefly that it didn’t matter what Villanelle had done, what she did and what she’d continue to do because it appeared that Eve felt this way about her regardless.

She let out an audible groan, fighting this internal battle, exhausting herself from it.

It must have been an hour that passed, and she was so far in her own head that she didn’t hear the footsteps pad across the floor from her bedroom. She felt the dip in the couch and heard the hiss that left Villanelle’s lips as she leaned back and breathed through the pain. Eve tiredly pulled herself up onto her elbows, rubbed her face and gave the woman a little room. “What are you doing up out of bed?” Eve asked, looking her over. She was wrapped in a blanket, but she could make out that she was wearing some very expensive looking nightclothes beneath it. “Oh, you dressed yourself, well done” Eve resisted the urge to ask why Villanelle had needed to stay in that case, if she was able to meet her basic needs without Eve’s help.

“I cannot sleep” Villanelle whispered, reaching out for Eve in the dark and pulling her so that she was sitting up properly, close to her. “It hurts, come to bed with me,” the young woman asked, her hand cupping Eve’s elbow, tugging on it gently.

“What hurts, Villanelle?” Eve sighed, impatient, tired, frustrated, over it.

“That you won’t sleep with me, please?” Villanelle mumbled, finally asking rather than demanding. The breath hitched in Eve’s throat and her eyebrows furrowed together, confused, surprised, but not really – caught off guard perhaps and unsure that her self-control which was seemingly at an all-time low (she blamed tiredness) would hold out.

“Villanelle” Eve groaned. It was pleading, she was pleading for Villanelle to stop asking for her to make hard decisions. She knew the woman couldn’t win no matter what she did. If she didn’t let her make the decision, Eve was mad; if she did let her make the decision, Eve was mad.

Before she could think up anything else, try to rationalise, try to plead her case, try to make a logical decision, Villanelle’s lips pressed against hers in the softest of kisses and all thought went out of the window.

Eve’s whole body shook as though an electric shock had coursed through her veins, her mind going blank, a shiver making its way down her spine. Nothing made sense and everything made sense all at once, and so she pressed her lips back against Villanelle’s and she sighed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like an asshole for leaving it there too!
> 
> I made a twitter so come and chat to me there if you would like -- @song4everystory


	8. London calling

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Endlessly sorry for the wait. Life got in the way and then all of a sudden I didn't know how to write anymore. I ended up writing this chapter in its entirety like three times before I deemed it postable. 
> 
> Hopefully not as long a wait for the next one. Thank you all for your continued support -- comments and kudos are always greatly appreciated. 
> 
> Thank you also to @chenckino on twitter who has made some amazing art around this story! Go and check it out!

Nothing made sense.

Eve couldn’t muster up a single coherent thought. Villanelle had lifted her out of her own head and taken her far, far away. She had disarmed her, every ounce of protest leaving her mind and body as she fell towards the younger woman slightly. It was no longer chaste, but it also wasn’t the clash of teeth and tongue she had imagined since the beginning of all of this either. It wasn’t romantic, nor particularly salacious, but something else entirely. Villanelle’s lips were pressed persistently against her own, the soft lips and sweet breath overpowering each one of Eve’s senses.

So detached from reality and against her better judgement, her arm snaked around Villanelle’s shoulder as she sought to deepen the kiss. She hoped that it would ground her, that this immeasurable force in her life would provide her with clarity, finally. She thought that the kiss might answer so many unanswered questions, questions she’d asked herself ever since the first time one of Villanelle’s kills had fallen into her lap – why was she so obsessed with the woman? Before she could even begin to pull it apart, unravel the obsession, find her answers, the lips pulled away from her own. She looked towards the woman, disoriented, dizzy.

“Come to bed, Eve.”

Ripples of suggestion bubbled below the surface of her words, but when she pulled back to look at Eve with quiet curiosity, there was an insufferable look of innocence there. Now apart from the woman, her brain filled with thoughts again and she pulled away some more, _just enough_ to get a firm grip on reality. What was she doing?

Before she could respond, try to reason with Villanelle, the woman overwhelmed her with kisses again, more insistent this time, messier, more teeth and more tongue. Before Eve could short circuit (she was sure she would if this went on), she thought, she acknowledged the fact that this was changing their dynamic and really changing _everything_.

Everything made sense.

Villanelle’s soft lips tasted like the coconut chapstick she kept in her nightstand, her breath smelled of the banana bread she had brought from the bakery when they had returned from Denmark. Villanelle was everywhere, all over her. All over her apartment, all over her things, leaving her mark on her, invading her privacy, taking over her life as she had before. It was overwhelming, intoxicating, exciting, and it was too much – she had told her as much earlier in the day.

As if sensing that Eve was slipping away, Villanelle’s hand moved from her elbow and trailed up her arm, all the way to her shoulder, her neck, her face, trying to centre her and bring her back. She fought it hard, the kisses harsher, her teeth sinking down into Villanelle’s lower lip which only spurred the woman on. Villanelle groaned and pressed her lips against Eve’s harder.

Eve knew that she was being manipulated, that she was allowing it. She was giving Villanelle permission to take all power and control from her again if she’d ever had any to begin with. The thought was abhorrent. Villanelle was all take, take, take. There was nothing natural about this – inevitable, maybe – but not natural, and certainly not on her terms.

But it felt so good.

She wanted it.

She hated that in a way, the feeling of kissing Villanelle was comparable to that of killing Raymond. The adrenaline, the danger, the horror, it was all there. The thrum in her chest was as prominent as it had been back then in Rome, in London, at the Roskilde Festival. It was how she always felt when she was around Villanelle – on edge, uncomfortable, alive.

The realisation was jarring, and she knew that the decision to stop kissing her should have been an easy one, resolute. It should have been unwavering, but she found herself fighting between her wants and her needs. She _wanted_ to kiss Villanelle, she _needed_ to not kiss Villanelle.

She wanted it, but she couldn’t do it.

She knew that if she gave herself to the woman, she’d never get herself back.

She wasn’t ready, even after all of this time.

It had to be on her own terms.

The realisation, hard and heavy forced a gasp from her lips and into Villanelle’s mouth. Before she could slip under the spell again, she pushed her hands from her face and Villanelle’s body away from her own, putting some much-needed distance between them.

“Come, Eve” Villanelle’s eyes were shining in the dark. The younger woman reached for her hand, tugging on it, trying to pull her close and up in one swift motion. She resisted. Villanelle looked hungry, the side of her mouth twitching up into a smirk, her eyes glazed over, eyelids hooded. She looked like she was going in for the kill, albeit a different type of kill this time – one that seemed more satisfying to the younger woman.

Finally wearing Eve down.

“No” Eve was short with her. She wanted to reinforce her point, and she also thought that her voice might betray her if she uttered more than a few words. “I told you as much at the hotel”.

She wanted to appear certain about her decision, even if she wasn’t. It was a battle between her head and her heart, and she was following her head. It wasn’t only a challenge for Villanelle, but a challenge for herself – resisting Villanelle now that she had gotten a taste of her.

Villanelle looked down at her, half stood up. She was clutching her ribs with one hand, the other falling limply at her side when Eve let go of it. Her gaze was intense as she looked over Eve’s face, looking for hesitation, looking for weakness, another opportunity to sweep in and change her mind. Eve regarded her stoically, her lips pursed, mustering up enough willpower to not give in to her.

The surprise was evident on the young woman’s face, her eyebrows raising, head tilting to the side. So much was different from the last time that Eve had rejected her. Hurt had been replaced by smugness, as though she was satisfied not to have won the war, but to have won the fight, the war waging on. Eve guessed that enough time had passed that the feelings that Villanelle had once had, had dissipated if they had ever existed in the first place. The young woman’s mouth, which had previously sat slightly agape, transformed into a cocky grin. She straightened up, adjusted the silk pyjamas, nodding her head towards Eve.

“Okay Eve… please yourself” she said, walking off towards the bed without another glance in her direction.

Eve supposed it was still an invitation, the way that the young woman strutted slowly away from her. She watched until she disappeared from view, falling back against the couch, feet pressed into it, covering her face with her hands. It was almost as if the air had been sucked out of her lungs. The hands covering her face muffled her frustrated groans. She was frustrated in every sense of the word. Her fingertips touched her lips, her neck, her arm, everywhere that had been caressed by the other woman. It came to a stop over her heart, feeling it beating beneath her pyjama top, a quick rhythmic thud that reminded her that she was still alive.

Laying her head back against the couch, she replayed the interaction backwards and committed it to memory.

‘ _Please yourself’_.

The double meaning wasn’t lost on her. Endless possibilities. She could easily slink off behind her. It was probably what Villanelle wanted, for Eve to give herself over so willingly so that she knew exactly what was too much and exactly what wasn’t enough. She could stay on the couch and really, truly _please herself_ , rid herself of some of the frustration. Instead, she stayed laying on the couch, hand on her heart, thinking about how much of a narrow escape she had had. She continued to teeter on the edge of the point of no return. If she was honest with herself, they had probably crossed that line already this evening, since she had kissed the woman back, but it was the smaller victories. She had taken control of the situation.

She reached for her blanket to cover herself again, burying her face into it and pausing when she realised that Villanelle had left her own behind. Breathing the woman in, she wrapped herself up in it and let the woman keep her awake until she couldn’t fight sleep for a second longer.

-

It was the sensation of being watched that brought her back to semi-consciousness. She could feel the woman all around her as though she hadn’t left the couch and gone back to bed the night before. The blanket, covering her face, protected her from the younger woman and having to deal with the fallout of the previous evening.

She should have known better.

But she had wanted it.

Villanelle stepped closer to her and her breath caught in her throat. She was worried for many reasons, worried that Villanelle might try to wake her, worried that Villanelle might try to kill her, and so her eyes shot open. Pushing the blanket away from her face, she blinked up at the woman as her eyes struggled to adjust to the light. Villanelle’s hand, which had been extended towards her, was quickly retracted. “Oh, I am sorry” she mumbled awkwardly, an expression akin to guilt plastered across her face.

“Jesus, Villanelle, don’t sneak up on me like that and don’t watch me whilst I’m sleeping” Eve gasped, rubbing her hand across her face, not prepared to have any conversation with the woman before her morning coffee.

As if on cue: “Coffee?”, the young woman asked.

“Mhm,” Eve mumbled, pulling the blanket up against her face again, breathing in the scent of the young woman standing beside her without thought.

“Nice blanket” Villanelle teased, pulling the blanket away from Eve’s face, smirking down at her. Eve tried to reach for it again, wanting to bury herself away in it forever so that she didn’t have to deal with the consequences, but before she could, Villanelle’s hand was on the side of her face, stroking her cheek, her fingertips brushing her hair behind her ear.

She froze.

It was intimate and she hadn’t been expecting it.

Her hand tucked beneath her cheek, she frowned at the younger woman, nudging the hand away from her face. “Um, coffee?” she asked, seeing the beginnings of a smile take over the young woman’s face as she made for the kitchen. A true picture of domestic bliss, she imagined, except it wasn’t.

Rolling over onto her back, her hands came up to cover her face, rubbing it to wake herself fully. She was quiet for a moment, still, blinking up at the ceiling. Villanelle caught her attention again as she heard her rifling around in the kitchen, pushing herself up onto her elbow to glance at the young woman over the arm of the couch. She frowned as she watched her pull open cabinets and search through draws as if taking inventory on everything she owned. Eve pulled herself up off the couch and slowly made her way through to the kitchen, eyebrows knitted together as Villanelle ignored her presence and continued to search around. Eve cleared her throat before she spoke: “Can I help you?”.

She had a brief moment of déjà vu when Villanelle turned to face her, giving Eve her undivided attention. The look on her face reminded her so much of when they had met in her Parisian apartment when Villanelle had turned away from the closet to find her, gun drawn, aimed to shoot God knows where. The same frustration that she had felt back then reappeared tenfold, from just one look, and she wished that she had a gun in hand at that moment, to assert some authority, to shoot her with it like Villanelle had shot her in the ruins. That really had put her in her place, right there, on the ground.

Her eyes drifted down to Villanelle’s hands, unsurprised that the woman had landed upon her own file. The workings of a true narcissist, Villanelle was sure to always make things circle back to herself. The file was one of the only personal effects that had survived the move to Prague, most other things having been left behind in London. She had rid herself of the designer clothes after Rome, smashed the bottle of La Villanelle against the wall after one too many glasses of wine one evening, drowning in Villanelle and her scent for weeks after. Really, the only things that had survived were said file and a single white rose that she had pressed in a notebook, saved from the flowers the young woman had delivered to her house.

“No Eve, I am just familiarising myself with your place, if I am going to be spending more time here” Villanelle looked dead serious, Eve merely rolling her eyes in response. The young woman was teasing her, or half-teasing at least. She was so sure that something would happen between them, it seemed, and after last night Eve wasn’t entirely sure that it wouldn’t, so she decided not to protest. Before she could say anything at all, Villanelle piped up again. “No photographs, nothing from your home, no _Niko_ , but you kept _this?”_ she asked, equal parts horrified and amused as she pulled her own mugshot away from the paper clip that attached it to her folder, turning it towards Eve.

Eve laughed.

“If I die in mysterious circumstances, they will know where to look first” Eve teased. She knew that Eve Polastri was effectively dead, she knew that there would be no fanfare, no mourners if she were to die, and there certainly wouldn’t be much of an investigation into her death, but it seemed as good an excuse as to why she had held onto the file.

Villanelle laughed, it was contrived, and Eve soon recognised it as her own. Her own laughter stopped, she regarded Villanelle curiously. The young woman was mimicking her. It caught her off guard, and her reaction seemed to give Villanelle pause too, for she tilted her head to the side and smiled at her.

“I will put this on the fridge, so that you can admire me all of the time” Villanelle nodded, her own laugh fighting its way out, warming Eve’s insides in the process. She shook her head, watched as Villanelle pinned the mugshot to her fridge with the magnet she had purchased in Budapest. The young woman walked around the kitchen as though it was her own, reaching for a mug and pouring Eve a mug of hot, black coffee.

“Thank you” Eve mumbled, unnerved by the whole interaction, sceptical about Villanelle’s easy, lightweight communication. She hadn’t even mentioned the evening before. She took a large gulp of coffee, Villanelle watching her. They shared the world’s most uncomfortable silence until Eve coughed and spoke up. “Just so we’re clear, you’re going home today” she warned the woman, not wanting a tantrum about it later. It was important to establish boundaries, better late than never, she supposed.

“You aren’t enjoying my company?” Villanelle asked, head tilted to the side, mouth twitching up into a smile. There she was.

Eve eyed her over her mug, her lips pursed as she tried to figure it out, figure out where Villanelle was going with this, figure out where she might take it. She stared her out for a while, and regretfully was the first to look away, dropping the mug into the sink and turning to the woman. “It’s not you, per se, but me… I’d appreciate some time to myself” she clarified with a nod.

“No, you won’t” Villanelle protested, the words long and drawn out. It was teasing, it was childish, and her self-confidence was infuriating.

Eve ignored her.

“I am going to shower, Mikael is expecting us for a debrief”.

-

When she emerged from the shower, fully dressed and hair towel dried, she was surprised to find Villanelle perched at her vanity and not going through all of her belongings. She was struggling to tame her hair, hissing out in pain every time she dragged a brush through the long locks. Eve had been reluctantly helping her with it for the past few days, but really it was beyond help, in need of a shampoo and condition. Eve didn’t offer help, resenting how Villanelle had often relaxed into it, like a cat being stroked.

The pleas came quickly. “Eve”, Villanelle pouted, raising her arms above her head to try again and groaning in pain. She was sat in a pair of pinstripe trousers and a black bra, the bruising on her ribs still prominent as Eve gazed at it through the mirror. She reluctantly stepped forward and helped her to brush it up into a ponytail. Villanelle’s eyes fluttered closed again and didn’t open until Eve stepped away. “Thank you” the young woman breathed out, reaching for her blazer and slipping into it, not bothering with a shirt beneath, exposing her décolletage. Eve tried not to dwell on the fact and allowed her eyes only a second to commit the view to memory. When she looked up, Villanelle was smirking.

Eve dragged her out onto the street, heading for the metro. Villanelle’s bag was swung over her shoulder. She didn’t want to give the young woman any excuse to come back to the apartment, so she had picked up the woman’s bag on the way out.

Although she didn’t complain, Eve could sense Villanelle’s discomfort on the journey to the office, admiring her from her seat as the young woman propped herself up against the railing, teeth biting down into her full bottom lip.

She wondered briefly how Villanelle had coped after the stabbing, the question sat on her tongue waiting to be asked. She had often thought about the aftermath, knowing that the woman had ended up in a hospital for a brief time, long enough to kill a child, but how had she made her way to England? She swallowed the urge to ask about it, worried about reminding the woman of the incident, thinking that it might suggest a sense of equality between them, they had both hurt each other at one time or another, after all.

Villanelle was tired by the time they reached the office, clutching her ribs as she climbed the stairs, letting out a puff of air as she lowered herself down into a chair. Eve pretended not to notice when she winced, crow’s feet wrinkles at the corners of her eyes as she breathed through whatever pain she was experiencing. Eve watched, and when she was caught watching by both Villanelle and Mikael, she stared straight ahead instead, thinking instead about how much _time_ had changed things and changed the dynamic between them, not even the gradual closing of a physical, emotional and almost spiritual gap, but _time_. Once upon a time, Villanelle had been faceless, nameless, and then all at once, she had taken over her life and completely turned it on its head.

Eve opted to stand, instead of taking the seat beside Villanelle.

Mikael shuffled around, laughing to himself, almost as contrived as Villanelle’s laugh had been earlier that morning. The two women exchanged a confused glance at one another, Villanelle shrugging, her lip twitching up at the side, her eyes narrowing on the man. “…Are… you okay?” she asked him.

Mikael looked towards her, sat down and sat forward. His forearms rested on his knees, hands clapping together. He acted as though he was registering her presence for the first time, a bellowing “Villanelle!” leaving his lips. Eve almost jumped at the sheer volume of it, her confusion mounting as she observed the strange behaviour. “How are you feeling?” Mikael asked, a shit-eating grin on his face, and Eve’s head tilted to the side, watching him carefully. Was he on drugs or something?

Villanelle uttered back a sarcastic: “I have been better”.

The old man laughed again. “Well, at least you are not dead… you know… I am very glad about that”. His hands were expressive as if intending to inspire a similar excitement from them too. It seemed not only a strange thing to say, but his body language was confusing and catching both women off guard.

Villanelle sat forward, lips pursed in a curious pout as she studied the man who shifted nervously under her gaze. Her voice was lower, almost a whisper when she next spoke. “Are you?” she asked, sizing the man up.

Another nervous laugh left his lips as he sat back in order to increase the distance between him and Villanelle. “Of course,” he shrugged, non-committal, a tinge of red to his cheeks and Eve’s confusion reached new heights.

“Okay… what is going on?” she asked, pointing at him. “Are you drunk?” she asked, eyes narrowed as she addressed him.

He acknowledged that she had spoken, but Villanelle, who’s attention hadn’t left the man, spoke before he had a chance to answer her. “Any reason you might have thought that I wouldn’t be alive?”. She rephrased the question quickly. “Are you surprised to see me?”. It seemed that the woman -- who was generally a good judge of character -- had smelled a rat in Mikael and his sudden change in behaviour and she wanted to get to the bottom of it.

Mikael cleared his throat and scratched the back of his neck. “No, I… of course not, I would not doubt your capabilities Villanelle… you know that you are my best girl” he explained, showering her with praise to deflect from himself, Eve expected, knowing that Villanelle was a sucker for it. It worked for a moment, Eve noticing the twitch at the corners of Villanelle’s mouth. She quickly refocused though, exhaling deeply through her nose, a sign of her increasing impatience and frustration.

They basked in silence for a moment, Eve watching on as Villanelle and Mikael stared each other down, Mikael managing to simultaneously look bothered and unbothered. “Start talking?” the young woman asked, calm, collected.

Mikael raised a questioning eyebrow at her, and they sat in silence for a moment longer.

“Start talking,” Villanelle said, eyebrows raised, it wasn’t a question this time. She sat back and produced a gun from behind her back, aiming it at him before Eve had even realised what was going on.

Jumping back in surprise, she was glad that she hadn’t taken a seat. “Villanelle!” she exclaimed, willing her to put the gun down. She had no idea where the young woman had gotten the gun from, how long it had been on her person, but all she could think about was that she hoped, just this once, that this could be resolved peacefully. She wanted answers, and also, she wanted to live. “Vill” she mumbled, quieter this time, perhaps to get her attention, perhaps to warn her, or to pacify her, she wasn’t sure.

Villanelle’s eyes were glued to Mikael though, she didn’t even glance in her direction. Eve couldn’t compute a single thought on how she might diffuse the situation, her eyes stuck on the gun and Villanelle’s finger on the trigger. It was like a post-traumatic stress episode, transporting her straight back to the ruins, and for a second, Villanelle was in her red outfit again, blood spatter across her cheek.

Mikael sighed, nodding his head, apparently not bothered by the gun that was aimed at him. “There was not sufficient time for me to warn you, you understand?” he attempted to reason, “I found out too late in the game that the operation had been compromised, and I had faith that you could take care of yourself”.

Eve observed the clenching of Villanelle’s jaw, feeling the anger that the woman was exuding. She would hate to be on the other side of it once again, though expected it was only a matter of time. Mikael wore a lopsided smile, a sad one, as though trying to appeal to Villanelle’s better nature. Eve wanted to tell him that he needn’t bother, she didn’t have one.

Villanelle’s eyebrows knitted together, pushing them into a line almost as vertical as her lips as she eyed him, impatient at his answer and lifting herself to her feet. She waved the gun towards him, silently gesturing for him to keep talking.

“Your… rendezvous with your girlfriend attracted some attention” he started, Eve thinking about Zosia for the first time since Villanelle had kissed her and frowning to herself without thought. “It has given the Twelve, and MI6 it appears, a head start on locating you, and protecting their own” Mikael explained, his voice clipped, his annoyance at the young woman obvious even though she was the one with a gun in her hand. Villanelle looked unfazed. “They have traced you to Prague. I guess that we overused your passport, which is the only mishap on my part” he said, holding up his hands in mock surrender, ironic considering he really did have a gun pointed at him.

Eve was, of course, interested, MI6 had been so scarcely mentioned during this whole ordeal, why were they suddenly involved now? “It seems that they paid your little girlfriend a visit after you left for Germany. She was very helpful to them, no?” Mikael asked, gesturing at Villanelle’s abdomen, referring to her injuries. “They were looking for Andrea Veselý, who of course she is well acquainted with”.

Villanelle showed a complete lack of concern, whereas Eve was biting nervously at her nails. They were closing in on Villanelle, and that meant that they were closing in on her, right? The young woman pointed the gun more determinedly at Mikael, a silent objection to having the blame laid at her feet. Her finger itched against the trigger and Eve spoke up again. “Villanelle” she warned from behind her, only to be ignored.

“Your girlfriend was most helpful to the British in particular, who are very happy to hear that Eve Polastri is alive and well… and your boss” Mikael looked away from Villanelle finally and looked towards Eve with eyebrows raised. She felt sick, she felt lightheaded. “Seems your extraction was more successful than we had thought, they had no idea”.

Eve was suddenly irritated with Villanelle, blaming her just like Mikael was, dropping down into the spare chair. “You can imagine they were not pleased to know this, that you are working with us” Mikael explained, and no Eve couldn’t imagine it, couldn’t imagine why they would care about her again. She hadn’t exactly been hiding in plain sight for those two years in London, she was out and proud, nothing to hide, over it, and they had never come knocking. “They really don’t like you two together, mhm? Why is that?” Mikael asked, looking between them. They looked at each other then. Eve’s eyes pierced into Villanelle’s, who’s softened in response. “No wait, I see it,” he said with a nod.

Villanelle looked back towards him, breathing out an impatient groan. She stepped towards him, in point-blank range now. The fear in his eyes was undeniable, for the first time, and he lifted up his hands, surrendering for real this time.

“Villanelle, I thought you could handle yourself, no? The target was a double agent. She was sent for Eve, to kill her, to extract her, I don’t know. You got in the way, but you won, I knew you would” Mikael said nonchalantly, reaching out with a smile to stroke Villanelle’s cheek, frowning when she batted his hand away with the gun.

Eve watched her reach a hand to her ribs, struggling now with the weight of the gun but persisting. Her back straightened and her eyes bore into him. “Eve? Who wanted Eve?” Villanelle asked, her Russian accent more prominent than Eve had ever heard it, but she was still stuck on the fact that a known assassin had been sent after her. MI6 wanted her dead? Why?

Mikael lifted up his hand, gesturing for Villanelle to give him a moment. The gun followed him as well as Villanelle’s eyes as he messed around on his computer and pulled up surveillance images of Zosia’s apartment building. “We keep surveillance on whoever employees come into contact with. We’re running a tight ship, we can’t have things leaking out, hmm?” he asked, not getting to the point quick enough for Eve who was anxious and impatient, quickly getting up out of her chair to observe whatever was on the screen. The chair clattered against the floor, Villanelle looking to her, concern etched onto her face. “Anyway,” Mikael said, raising her eyebrows as if her behaviour was somehow an over-exaggeration to what she had just been told. She was wanted. By MI6. She had been hunted down by an assassin.

He spun the screen towards them, zoomed in on Zosia’s front door and they waited. The seconds felt like minutes and they waited. The door opened slowly, and out came Carolyn Martens.

Eve, who had been bent towards the screen, stood immediately as Carolyn appeared to look directly towards the camera. The air left her lungs, she felt faint, barely registering Villanelle grasping her wrist and pulling her down into the chair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come and chat over on twitter -- @song4everystory


	9. 'V'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi friends! Things are heating up in this chapter. Please be aware of the change in archive warning, some pretty graphic descriptions of violence to come in this chapter and in the next few probably. As always, thanks for all of your comments and kudos! Enjoy.

She felt the beginnings of panic swell in her stomach as she fixated on the image of Carolyn Martens glaring up at a security camera. The feeling emanated, spread throughout her body, burning her from the inside out. It engulfed her, swallowed her whole, paralysed her. She couldn’t understand why she was panicking, because she had made peace with the constant threat to her safety, the likelihood that she could die at any point, by anyone’s hand long ago, but it came at her thick and fast nonetheless. It was like an out of body experience almost, because the reaction was entirely physical. In her brain, she knew that it was irrational and that she wasn’t even necessarily scared of dying, but it was the confusion and the shock and the _why now_ that left her unable to speak.

One second she had been here, fully immersed, fully invested in the altercation between Mikael and Villanelle, albeit confused by it. It seemed that Villanelle had been quicker to piece things together, and whilst Eve deemed herself a good judge of character, she had not expected this, not like this, not right now. She disappeared into herself. Her eyes couldn’t focus, it was loud, but she couldn’t hear, her throat was tight as though it was being constricted so that she couldn’t breathe, her entire body was shaking which made it harder for her to realise that her hands were when she reached up to brush her hair out of her face. She was overwhelmed, she had finally reached a limit, maybe. Maybe it had all finally become too much. She felt claustrophobic, trapped in her own skin, and she hated it. She hated it.

Although her eyes had glazed over and made it impossible for her to _see_ the image of Carolyn any longer, it seemed like the image had already been etched, burned into her brain, never to be unseen. It was shocking. It was shocking for her to come around now, after all this time. She hated that she was surprised most of all when she had been so prepared for so long. She hadn’t been surprised when Jerome and Mikael had shown up at her apartment in London and recruited her to their operation – in fact, she had been calm and collected. Villanelle had knocked her off course once again and she was irritated. She was irritated and shocked and surprised and --

“Eve” It was close, but it sounded far away.

She pushed it away and she thought, she thought long and hard. She didn’t know why her former boss was angered or at least surprised to find that she was alive and tangled up in this web again. She wondered if Carolyn was within her rights to deem this a betrayal, but she was stumped as to why it would have warranted a hit against her. As far as she was aware, MI6 had not been brought into this hardly at all yet, if anything, weren’t they fighting a common enemy? She was reminded of the inconsistencies she had uncovered whilst working with Kenny to track Villanelle and surmised that this must mean that Carolyn was more involved with the Twelve than she had ever given her credit for.

“Eve”

Nothing had been left unresolved between them, she thought. Their parting exchange in Rome had felt more final, more absolute than any parting of ways that she had ever experienced. With everyone else, goodbyes had felt like a sort of semi-colon, a pause, a see you later rather than a goodbye. It was certainly so when it came to Niko – safe and nice and fine Niko, and Villanelle – captivating, dangerous, enigmatic Villanelle. Those goodbyes had always felt non-committal because she hadn’t been sure, another battle between head and heart, another step on this never-ending tightrope she was walking. But she had been sure with Carolyn. She had known long ago that one of her biggest mistakes had been trusting the woman too much, whilst hardly trusting her at all. It seemed that the repercussions of her refusal to go with Carolyn in Rome were finally catching up to her. She wondered if it would have happened sooner if she hadn’t have left Villanelle and returned home alone at the end of it all.

“Eve”.

More persistent this time, a tug on her hand, the hand that Villanelle was holding. She heard the click of the safety being activated on the gun. She got a sense of Villanelle tucking the weapon back into her pants without even seeing it, or registering it at least, and then Villanelle dropped to her knees before her in genuine concern. She had intercepted her view of the computer screen, forced her to think of something, of anything else, and the spell broke. She snapped back, suddenly aware, too aware, aware of everything, especially aware of the fact that Villanelle was so close, hand in hers, the other rested on Eve’s thigh.

“You are okay” It was supposed to be reassuring, comforting perhaps. But it was wrong, all wrong, very wrong.

She was back, and she wasn’t panicking suddenly, nor was she scared. She felt weightless, almost, pushing Villanelle back, the woman barely managing to steady herself as she remained crouched down, attending to her. Eve’s eyes flitted up to Mikael who seemed surprised, whether by Eve’s slight outburst, or Villanelle’s reaction to it, it was impossible to tell.

“I know” Eve breathed out, and she was so confident. She really was okay, and she didn’t need Villanelle’s reassurance. “No thanks to you”. As soon as she had said it, she wished that she could take it back, even if it were true. Villanelle looked wounded, Eve looked away.

“A thank you would be nice, Eve… it is not the first time that I have nearly gotten myself killed because of you”. It wasn’t harsh, nor did the woman look particularly hurt, it was just a statement of fact.

“I never asked you to” She hated herself for saying it, but it was spilling out, the feeling spewing out of her before she could process them. She was angry at Villanelle, whether she was right to be or not.

“Okay… okay… stop fighting like children” The interjection bumbled between them awkwardly. It was meaningless and it held no weight, the two women stuck on each other. They had surely surpassed the point of needing Mikael to mediate for them if the previous evening was anything to go by. “We have a plan to separate the both of you for a while until the dust has somewhat settled… it seems that they only fear you when you are together, no? I want to get to the bottom of it” He didn’t, Eve thought. She knew exactly why they were hung up on Eve and Villanelle’s relationship with one another, it was because they knew, they knew what she was capable of. Maybe they really did have them pinned as the next Bonnie and Clyde, it was laughable really.

The suggestion hit differently for each of them. Eve welcomed it. She needed time away from Villanelle, she needed to process this on her own, to prepare for the best- and worst-case scenarios. She needed a vacation, she needed to be out of Prague, away from the Four, from Carolyn, from whoever was closing in on her.

Villanelle, on the other hand, stood up, eyebrows raised, hands on her hips in protest.

“No.”

Eve and Mikael regarded her, both equally as curious. Villanelle looked between them both and shook her head. “No. I am not going to be separated from Eve now that Carolyn is back on the scene.” It was affirmative, and it seemed that the young woman was back to not considering Eve’s feelings. Something swelled inside of her though, a feeling that she rejected absolutely and blamed on the events of the previous evening. It was a warm feeling, a curious feeling that she hated to associate with Villanelle. Manipulation, seduction, aloofness were things that she had come to accept and expect from Villanelle, softness less so.

The desire to protect Eve, had it always been there? Was it the offer of protection or the demand for power and control over her? She settled on the latter.

“What good are you to me?” Eve scoffed, gesturing to how Villanelle was unable to stand unaided, leaning up against the back of the chair at this point.

Villanelle growled.

She wanted to avenge them, Eve realised. Maybe because she was angered by Carolyn’s betrayal, but Eve thought there was more to it than that. She thought that perhaps, Villanelle held Carolyn accountable for the events of Rome entirely, it had been orchestrated by her after all. They had been a pawn in Carolyn’s game, she the puppet master, they the pieces that she moved around to fit her own agenda. Eve got it, she understood Villanelle’s need for revenge whilst not sharing it exactly. She had considered Carolyn untrustworthy always, and still, if anything was for certain, the subsequent events – the fight, the shooting – they weren’t masterminded by her, rather an utter mess created by Eve and Villanelle alone.

Eve knew, without a doubt, that she would have followed Villanelle to Alaska, to the ends of the earth if she had asked, before Raymond and the birds and the smoking gun.

It was their mess.

“I will be very good for you, Eve” It was a protest, an argument, a plea maybe. There was an innuendo there and Eve knew that the fact that Villanelle wasn’t playing on it meant that she was serious. Eve was confused by all of it. It was conflicting, the warmth that spread throughout her at Villanelle’s apparent desire to protect her again, anger at the suggestion that she wasn’t able to protect herself. She had surely proven herself more than capable by now.

It was another misunderstanding. The two of them were endlessly awful at communicating clearly with one another. “Nothing good ever comes of being around each other”. It was monotonous and the statement true to some extent. Sometimes she _felt_ good around Villanelle, sometimes, but it wasn’t good, it was very, very bad.

“That’s not tr-“

Eve interrupted before she could plead her case, before the argument could continue, turning her attention to Mikael. He wasn’t off the hook, even though the new revelations had superseded his own betrayal, Eve fixed him with a glare. “You might not care whether or not we live or die Mikael, but I do, so I’m getting out of Prague for a while”. It was authoritative and almost not like her. Villanelle looked at her with surprise and Eve knew not to give her the opportunity to interject.

“I do care, of course I care” It was sickly sweet and made her skin crawl. No one could be trusted, she had gotten too comfortable. “But I agree, a break from Prague, a break from Villanelle”. He turned away from them, and the two women looked towards each other for a moment. Villanelle was obviously surprised by her lack of control of the situation and surprised that she had been overruled, a pout forming on her face. Eve looked back to Mikael who offered her a bag with a clean phone, a clean passport, cash. It was an alias, a new identity, not a clean break but almost. She pursed her lips, knowing now that she shouldn’t trust him but that she really didn’t have any other choice.

A curt nod of her head, the batting away of Villanelle’s hand when she reached for her.

“I will be in touch” she heard Mikael speak, but she had already turned away and headed for the door. She had so much to figure out. Where would she go? The world was her oyster, so to speak.

Down on the street, she let out a long, gasping breath. A long exhale, a satisfying expulsion of all of the stress and worry that had accumulated within her at the news. Just that morning she had wandered carelessly through the city to the office with Villanelle, and now she was hyperaware of the fact that someone could attack her at literally any second.

She walked carefully now, and her body whipped around when she heard Villanelle call out her name. She tensed, really not interested in arguing with the woman again, remembering all too well what had happened the last time she walked away from her.

She waited for Villanelle to catch up with her, the young woman breathless and clutching her ribs. “My bag”. Another gasping breath. “You have my bag”. A gesture towards the bag hanging over Eve’s shoulder. Eve watched the young woman, stunned for a second before slipping the bag off of her shoulder and handing it over to her.

Eve adjusted her own handbag on her shoulder and pondered whether she dare turn her back on her once again. “I will not try to convince you” Villanelle was quiet. It wasn’t a total lack of emotion, nor was it an emotion that she could identify easily. “You have already made up your mind?” A question, she supposed it was rhetorical, for she had been walking away from her, from the whole situation thirty seconds ago.

She answered anyway: “Yes”.

Villanelle looked conflicted, staring at her, looking her over as though she was committing her to memory. Her eyes flitted to passers-by whilst she tried to find the right words to say.

Eve waited.

“Okay” Villanelle breathed out with a hesitant nod.

Eve wondered for a second whether that was all she had to say. She hadn’t expected anything meaningful from the woman, nor an apology or even a plea to come with her, but something _more_ perhaps. Villanelle always had more to say, always had more to do, always wanted more.

It sat between them for a moment.

The young woman reached into her bag and pulled out a boxed burner phone, activating it right there on the side street and plugging its cell phone number into her own phone with a nod. She reached easily for Eve’s own bag, swapping the phone given to her by Mikael out for the new one, dropping the other to the floor and stomping on it until it was crushed to smithereens.

She didn’t protest, she just simply watched.

“Try not to use the passport too much, I don’t trust him” Villanelle handed the bag back to her. “Keep moving” Her lips pursed for a second, displeased, and then she forced a smile. “I will see you soon, Eve”.

It was a promise, Eve thought, and she nodded in response.

“See you soon” she uttered, but Villanelle had already turned on her heel, walking away with purpose. Even from behind, Eve could see the woman’s hand pressed against her ribs, could see the frown on her face, could imagine the mess she was about to make of Zosia.

It warmed her heart, the knowing without needing to be told, and she turned away without a second glance, knowing she really would see her soon whether she liked it or not.

-

Luxembourg.

Athens.

Dubai.

Istanbul.

**Rome.**

Doha.

Warsaw.

**London.**

A pang in her chest, and then Brussels.

She stood, staring at the departure board and decided on Brussels.

She thought up a plan to bounce around Europe for a while, to not become complacent. She hated that it seemed like she was listening to Villanelle’s advice but knew that she needed to keep moving so that she was less likely to be found. Brussels first, and then she would get around as much as possible without using the passport.

Now that Villanelle had smashed up the phone given to her by Mikael, the young woman was her only point of contact. She opened up the phone and clicked onto her contacts, laughing when Villanelle’s number wasn’t there. Seemed she would have to wait that one out.

She breezed onto the plane, moving without even thinking about it into her seat and resting her cheek against the alcove which housed the window. She thought briefly about Villanelle, certain that Zosia was probably dead already.

Would Villanelle disappear too after this?

Would she put her own plans into motion?

Had they already exhausted their time with the Four?

So many thoughts, always too many thoughts.

If Villanelle were here, she would probably comment on it. The woman would tell her to get out of her own head or would do what she had the previous evening and pull her out of it momentarily with lips and teeth and tongue.

Just this once, Eve thought she might allow it.

With a sigh, she watched as they aeroplane hurtled down the runway and ascended, leaving Prague in the dust.

-

She took a shuttle from the airport to Bruxelles-Midi and admired their departures board. The fine art of disappearing meant that she would probably be travelling often over the next couple of months.

Amsterdam.

Paris.

Maastricht.

**London.**

Not London, but maybe London?

She laughed at the insanity of it. She could literally run towards the problem. She imagined it. She would leave a trail, no doubt, by scanning her passport through at border control and then before long they would all be after her.

She thought about it and she laughed because she had hidden in plain sight before. She had lived in London for almost two years after Rome. They had kept tabs on her, but they had left her alone. Had the time for her being left alone passed now that they knew of her closeness to Villanelle? Did they want her, or did they want Villanelle? It was impossible to tell.

She missed London.

She booked a train ticket to London.

She laughed at the audacity.

Her penchant for recklessness and danger would catch up to her sooner or later, but maybe she really just didn’t care anymore. Maybe she wanted to see Carolyn secretly. Maybe she wanted them all to come after her. Maybe she just wanted it all to be over. She wasn’t sure, but by five o’clock she had boarded the train to London.

More all-consuming thoughts of Villanelle and of dying.

Would she be proud of her for doing this?

She was headed straight into the lion’s den. Carolyn would call it showing off as she had called Villanelle a show-off years ago. Villanelle, brazen, brash Villanelle would probably commend her for her efforts, but chastise her for putting herself in harm's way.

She resolved not to tell her if she were to reach out.

-

It wasn’t a double standard, but a mere fact that Eve just didn’t possess the same survival skills as Villanelle. Not only that, but she was without a weapon and certainly wouldn’t fare well if it came down to hand-to-hand combat.

Doubt and regret crept in the further she got on her journey back to London. This rash decision, her desire to go against the grain, would end up with her getting killed, she could feel it in her bones.

Her hand rubbed against her neck uncomfortably. She felt paranoid, as though everyone was staring at her as if they knew somehow. Was she technically a fugitive here? Was she a wanted woman? She had technically gotten away with murder thus far. The paranoia grew and grew when she alighted the train at London St Pancras International. She pushed through the crowds and ignored demands for her to use ePassport checks, instead waiting to be seen by a person. Better to have a person see her than to have a photograph taken to document her entry into the United Kingdom. She shuddered as she passed through border control, back on home soil, stumbling down towards the tube station.

The desire to return to London was completely replaced by the desire to get out of London. The realisation that it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility for anyone to recognise her here, where for all intents and purposes she was dead and buried, was as strange a feeling as any she had ever experienced. She didn’t even know where she was going, she had no plan, but she knew she had to get out of the city and find somewhere to just fade into the background for a while.

Her heart was racing slightly in her chest as she used some cash to buy a tube ticket to get her to Euston station. From there, she could get practically anywhere in the country and resolved to just get herself on the next train departing the station. She couldn’t afford to waste time by hanging around. It was dangerous, it was so dangerous, but it was exhilarating. She thought about how Villanelle must feel getting away with things in plain sight, and she understood it finally.

Taking the escalator down to catch her Victoria line train, she was struck with a sense of nostalgia. She was reminded of simpler times when her only concern had been getting home as quick as she could after a long day at work, breezing past the tourists that stood stationary on the escalator, favouring the left-hand side as though almost running down it would get her on the train faster than them. The smell struck her too. It was humid, sweaty almost and smelled distinctly of the engines that passed through the platform minute after minute. She liked it. Maybe she always had. Glancing up towards the board, it read the time – 18:31 – and told her that the train to Brixton would depart in one minute.

She wanted to miss the train.

She wanted to miss the train like she had missed trains every evening she hadn’t wanted to return home to Niko. All of the ‘five more minutes’ before she had to return to fulfil the role of dutiful wife. She had failed most of the time and had ultimately been a huge disappointment to her former husband.

She didn’t miss being married, but sometimes she missed him.

She spiralled then, into thoughts and feelings about her failure and dissatisfaction with herself. She was depressed momentarily by the realisation, once more, that she had lost everything because of her attraction towards Villanelle. The woman was like an itch that she couldn’t help but scratch, and she had scratched and scratched until she was met with blood and sinew and bone. She couldn’t stop scratching.

The train breezed past her, hot air bursting from within the tunnels and bringing her out of her stupor. She was pushed towards the train by a sea of people impatient to get home when it had barely come to a stop, and she rushed forward with them, watching as they filled up the seats and opting to stand, grabbing onto the railing to steady herself, people filling up the space around her.

No one caught her eye, and she was once again grateful for this unfriendly, faceless city, where everyone went unnoticed. It brought her peace, dispelled her anguish and she took a breath, steadying herself and finding her balance for when the train pulled away from the platform. It was as though it had been committed to muscle memory after years of standing up on packed trains.

_“The next station is Euston. Doors will open on the right-hand side. Change for Northern line, London Overground and National Rail services.”_

Eve blinked, turned 180 degrees and fought her way through the people surrounding her to get off of the train. That same smell overcame her, and she made for the exit, walking through the tunnels, taking the escalator back up to the station and pushing her ticket into the machine. It had been years since she had, had a paper ticket, deciding to keep it as some kind of memento. She had a strong sense that she might not ever return to London again, and the temptation to stay for _just one night_ was there but stunted by fear at the danger she could be putting herself in if she did. Another departure board and she realised just then how tired she was after travelling all day.

The next train was going to Manchester Piccadilly and was leaving in eight minutes. There was an aching in her chest at leaving so soon and at being here at all. It was almost like a taste of what her life had been and could have been simultaneously, if only she had made different choices. It was ironic that she hadn’t felt so sentimental about the place when she had lived there.

She had huge regrets, especially now in the uncertainty of everything, in the inability to trust anyone. She had no idea what would happen beyond the fact that she was headed towards Manchester. She had been once before, with Niko on an anniversary of theirs and had liked it enough.

She had so many feelings, so many, and was aware that they likely were aroused by the fact that this was the longest she had been alone for in weeks, and it was indefinite. It was a subdued version of the mourning she had gone through after Rome, like a constant ache in her chest. She had been so prepared for so long and she had thrown herself under the bus again.

It was Villanelle’s fault.

On her journey north, she pulled a notepad out of her bag and tried to make some sense of everything. She wanted to figure out what had sparked a sudden interest in herself, and Villanelle, jotting down dates and places to try to get to the bottom of it. She struggled to believe that they hadn’t been able to locate Villanelle before now, and their disbelief at Eve’s aliveness was more than suspicious. They really can’t have been that covert, especially considering Villanelle’s total disregard for keeping things under the radar. She loved to draw attention to herself.

Had she worked during their separation?

She rolled her eyes at her own thoughts. Separation, as though they were exes like Villanelle had suggested to her lover.

Speaking of, was Zosia dead? She wanted to know for sure.

Did her travelling with Villanelle have anything to do with things? They had worked together before after all, but by travelling around with Villanelle on jobs, it could give off the impression that Eve was more involved than she was.

She wasn’t, she told herself.

She resolved to ask Villanelle some of these questions, writing them down, unsure when the elusive woman might call and not wanting to forget them.

Was she thinking of her too?

-

It was close to 10 pm when she arrived in Manchester and she was beyond exhausted. Her whole body was aching, and she struggled to lift her bag back onto her shoulder as she exited the train station. She soon realised the impracticality of being without a smartphone when she thought about the ‘what next’. She had no way of locating a cheap place to lay low and instead was forced to spend an extortionate amount to stay in a hotel close by to the station for the night, knowing that in the morning she would have to put some more thought into what happened from here on out. She had technically pulled a Villanelle and gone rogue, knowing that Mikael would be less than thrilled with her current location. She was all on her own, and she was pleased about it.

Giving over a fake name and paying in cash, she let out a relieved sigh when she was given her key, the key that promised that sleep could overcome her soon. She was more than ready for it as she slid into the elevator and leaned up against it, closing her eyes for just a moment as it carried her up to bed.

She dragged her feet across the hallway, sliding the key into its slot and watching for the green light, knowing it would be unbearable for her at this point for it to not work and for her to have to go back down to the front desk. The door opened though, and she stepped into the room, dropping her bag, tearing away her clothes unceremoniously and dropping, almost naked down onto the bed.

Relief. The sweetest relief. Her eyes closed.

-

She couldn’t have been asleep for more than five minutes it felt like when the burner phone rang loudly from her bag. A sleepy glance towards the digital alarm clock on the nightstand contradicted her though, reading that it was in fact after 3 am. She frowned and screwed her eyes closed, trying to shut out the sound with her pillow, but when it stopped ringing for the first time, it rang again.

It was relentless, ringing over and over until she was conscious enough to register that it must be Villanelle calling. A quick burst of energy allowed her to reach over the bed for her bag, fishing the phone out of it, pressing the red button, silencing it and holding it in her hand as she slipped back under quickly.

Now was not the time.

Villanelle didn’t share that same sentiment though, because it rang again, and with a low growl, her thumb pressed against the answer button and she lifted the phone to her ear, rolling onto her back and refusing to open her eyes as she spoke into it.

“Mhm?” Okay, more sounds than words, but it was all that she could manage at that moment.

She listened, heard Villanelle breathe almost relieved in response. “Eve”. Her tone of voice was warm, almost affectionate, as though they were old friends that hadn’t communicated in years. It had been mere hours, and Eve hadn’t expected to hear from her so soon.

“Yes?” Eve replied, yawning as she sat up a little on the bed. “It’s late”.

“I know, I’m sorry” Villanelle sounded unmistakably tired too.

The silence sat between them for a moment, Eve hearing Villanelle breathe down the phone, hearing the hiss that left her lips, imagining that the woman was adjusting her position in her own bed.

“Did you make it to London okay?” Eve’s eyes flew open at the question, and she sat up in the bed, staring into the darkness as her eyes struggled to adjust.

“I… I’m not in London” she replied, an octave or two higher than necessary, and giving away her surprise at the question immediately. She wasn’t about to disclose her location to Villanelle in any case, but why had she assumed London from the off?

If Villanelle was assuming London, was everyone else assuming London?

“Did you make it to England okay, then?” Villanelle rephrased her question, but it only made Eve more uncomfortable.

A silence, a pause for thought, and Eve found the words she needed to reply. “What makes you think I am in England? Surely I would want to be as far away from London as humanly possible given the recent news?”

Villanelle hummed over the phone, and she was reminded of Rome, hearing Villanelle moan and hum into her ear whilst she touched herself. “You would think so, but I’m sure that you thought hiding in plain sight might be the better option, it has worked well for you so far after all”.

It was a fair point, and Eve struggled to think up a comeback.

“I’m not telling you where I am”.

“I didn’t ask you to, Eve. I just asked if you arrived safely”.

Eve breathed out. Villanelle was impossible, the young woman’s tone of voice was nonchalant, making Eve look like an idiot for thinking otherwise. “Yes, I have arrived safely”.

Another hum from Villanelle’s end.

Eve wanted to ask, more than anything she wanted to ask, but dare she?

“How did it go?” It was phrased casually, and Eve hoped that Villanelle wouldn’t ask her to elaborate.

“Fine” Came the reply, and it was Eve’s turn to hum. She was somewhat disappointed by the lack of detail but didn’t want Villanelle to know that.

“Do you want me to tell you about it, Eve?” Villanelle asked after a beat, Eve swallowed thickly, feeling the blush on her cheeks, the heat at her neck, feeling her pulse and how it had picked up at the suggestion.

“No” _Yes._ “No, of course not” _Of course she did._

“Okay” Villanelle breathed out.

It was a niggling feeling inside, Eve tried to shake it off but failed on all counts. She wanted to know, she wanted to satisfy her curiosity, to know for sure that Zosia had been taken care of. She pinned her desire for the woman to be dead on the fact that she had named her and told herself that it had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that Villanelle had seemed serious about her for a second.

“You… killed her?” Eve let out a shuddery breath, her fingernails digging into the palm of her hand as she chastised her body for betraying her. She was aware that Villanelle was as able to hear her as she was able to hear the other woman.

“Do you want me to tell you about it, or not?” Villanelle laughed, it was a low chuckle, and it shot through Eve’s ear and right down between her thighs. She squeezed them together and pressed her fingernails harder into her palm.

Eve let it resonate, thought of the implications of answering honestly. She was thousands of miles away from her, she might not see her ever again, and so she took a chance and breathed out a casual “yes”.

She didn’t have to see Villanelle to know that she was wearing a smug smile on her face, the woman no doubt pleased with herself and pleased with Eve’s honesty. “Well… where should I start, Eve?” It was seductive, and Eve sucked in a deep breath, slowly exhaling as she tried to find the right words. Villanelle was teasing her.

“I… um, at the beginning?”.

A pleased sigh on Villanelle’s end and then silence, Eve listening intently, waiting impatiently for what was to come. The silence grew and grew, and Eve was impatient, almost speaking up again when Villanelle suddenly came back to life.

“She was already scared when I arrived” Villanelle husked. “I told her that I wanted to use her body, that I wanted to have sex with her” Eve swallowed the lump in her throat. “Honestly I almost did sleep with her, you left me in kind of a weird mood, Eve” Eve had the phone pressed so close to her ear that she could feel the vibration of the sound through the speaker, imagining just for a moment that it was Villanelle’s lips against her skin and squeezing her thighs shut again. This wasn’t dirty talking, she had to remind herself, it wasn’t like Rome.

“But I couldn’t stop thinking about how she gave your name to Carolyn, and about how she had put you in danger, and she kept apologising and telling me that she had been scared and that she hoped that you were okay” Villanelle growled, Eve bit down into her bottom lip. “I told her that you are okay, but that no thanks to her it seems like it will be a while before I can kiss you again”.

Eve gasped, and the line grew silent.

Villanelle was so certain about it, it was almost infuriating, but all it did was render her speechless.

“She got upset with me… then upset with you… saying that suddenly she had no regrets about naming you at all” Eve listened, breathing laboured as she anticipated what was to come next. “I was impatient, I told her to apologise and she refused Eve, she refused to apologise to me”.

Eve knew all too well how Villanelle handled rejection.

“I didn’t want it to be too quick then, so I forgot about the gun and I choked her, up against the wall, like Raymond did to me, you remember?”

How could she forget?

Eve thought about when Villanelle had, had her pressed against the wall in a similar chokehold. “I wish you had been there” a softer sigh from the younger woman, a _Rome_ sigh.

Oh.

“It took _ages._ ” A gasp left the young woman’s lips, and Eve did all she could to not imagine that Villanelle was touching herself, but found herself aroused by her words and tone of voice nevertheless.

“She begged, with her eyes, she was begging” A moan this time, and Eve wasn’t going to touch herself, wasn’t going to give in like last time.

“And t-then she was unconscious, and I was so angry, Eve” A pause, another breathless moan, but it was more distinct this time.

“So I squeezed harder. I…” The line grew silent except for moans and whimpers and then the faint buzz of a vibrator, Eve raised her eyebrows in surprise.

She waited patiently, listened intently, and she didn’t know what possessed her to command the young woman to “keep talking”, saying it before she had even thought it through.

Another moan, a deep breath. “I watched her for a while, and then I took the gun and fired off two rounds b-between her eyes” Eve could imagine Villanelle’s head falling back when she’d managed to finish her sentence, imagining what she might look like right at that second, disappointed slightly not to have a phone that could show her.

Villanelle’s moans had picked up, breathless, wanton. Eve knew that her panties were ruined, so she reached down to pull them off.

Tempted as she was to feel herself, she resisted and instead listened to Villanelle. “ _Fuck, where are you_?” The young woman moaned, and a deep blush took over Eve’s face.

She ignored her, answering instead with “keep going”. The buzz got more persistent and Eve realised that it had been changed to a higher setting.

Moans and gasps and cries and “ _Eve_ ”.

The line grew quiet, Villanelle breathless on the other end, the vibrator switched off.

Thirty seconds and then: “Where are you, Eve?”

Eve smiled “It doesn’t matter”.

Villanelle mumbled something beneath her breath that Eve couldn’t quite catch, and they were silent again for a moment.

“Your sheets smell like you, even though you haven’t slept in them” Villanelle sounded like her face was buried into a pillow or something, it was muffled.

She shouldn’t have been surprised, but she was. “And that vibrator is _good_. Where did you get it from?”

A chuckle rang out from the other end, Eve shook her head. It was pointless arguing over it, calling Villanelle out for it, so she didn’t.

“Goodnight,” she said, a smile on her face despite everything.

“Goodnight, Eve”.

The line went dead, and it wasn’t until she was laid up in bed, eyes closed, recounting the phone call that she realised that she had forgotten about her questions.

Reaching out for her phone again, she found the contact and saved it in her phone as 'V'.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come chat on twitter -- @song4everystory


	10. Manchester

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry that the updates are trickling in so slowly. I am heading back to university this week, so I have been trying to get ahead with writing so that I can guarantee semi-consistent updates, which left me with three unedited chapters. 
> 
> The ladies are reuniting in the next chapter, so look forward to that!!
> 
> Hope you enjoy and as always, thank you very much for all of the kudos and comments.

She had read once about the four stages of a sleep cycle. Light sleep, defined non-REM sleep, deep sleep and then finally REM sleep. She knew that the latter stages were of particular importance to cognitive performance and that without entering these stages her problem-solving capabilities and ability to concentrate would be severely compromised. She also knew, without a doubt, that she hadn’t entered deep sleep once following on from her phone call with Villanelle. With vague awareness, she glanced towards the digital clock each passing hour whilst acknowledging the dampness that still existed between her thighs.

She felt like a pendulum, swaying from one extreme to the other. Awake. Asleep. Awake. Asleep. Awake. The absence of dreams and busyness of her brain made her question whether she was sleeping at all, or simply closing her eyes and willing it.

She thought of Villanelle -- too much of Villanelle and not enough about the present danger that she found herself in. She thought that she could live with the sleeplessness if it was more productive, if she was busy not sleeping because she was coming up with plans and protecting herself, but regretfully that had almost nothing to do with it. Instead, her sleeplessness was entirely unproductive, comprised of thoughts of moans and gasps and cries and “ _Eve_ ”.

She wouldn’t answer next time she called.

Villanelle was dangerous.

It wasn’t like she was just coming to that realisation, but this time she wasn’t referring to Villanelle’s danger in the physical, assassin, murder-for-hire sense. Presently, she deemed Villanelle dangerous for interfering with her ability to rationalise and think clearly and sleep, goddamn it, she couldn’t even sleep. Villanelle’s mere existence and presence in her day-to-day life had knocked her off-kilter and distracted her from her job, which was particularly important right now whilst she was having to actively try to keep herself alive and _avoid_ danger.

She wouldn’t answer next time she called.

She wouldn’t.

Her next conscious thought occurred five minutes before her supposed check-out time. She stretched out on the bed, plumped up the pillows and groaned before laying her head back down on them, burying her face in them and taking a deep breath. She was fatigued, her head aching from insufficient sleep.

Without opening her eyes, she reached an arm over to the nightstand and fumbled around in search of the hotel room phone. One eye opened reluctantly, and she cleared her throat before dialling down to reception to request a later check out time. She didn’t have the heart to throw herself under the bus and admit that she had overslept and so instead she proclaimed, rather convincingly that she had some last-minute work things to take care of before she left town following a business trip, and that, if they would be so kind, she required some more time to ‘get her ducks in a row’.

The turn of phrase felt foreign leaving her lips, sounded awkward in her accent, but she had already committed herself. It was an English expression that belonged more in Niko’s vocabulary than her own, and it made her pause for a second, furrow her brows in wonder at the fact that _that_ was all she could come up with.

Sleep deprivation at its finest.

In an attempt to get her to _stop_ talking altogether, the man on the other end of the phone interrupted and assured her that it wouldn’t be a problem to extend her check-out time by two hours, after which she would have to vacate so that housekeeping could prepare for the next guests.

Conscious of the lack of time and her lack of a plan, she pulled her bag up from the floor after disconnecting the call and searched through it for all of the cash she had on her person. £5000, or the equivalent in Czech Koruna. She had collected all she could from her apartment, but conscious that it might look suspicious if she were travelling with a _ton_ of cash, she had hidden the remainder beneath her bed back at the apartment. Poor judgement on her part, she thought now. What she had with her would last her two months, maybe three if she lived frugally and avoided cities and travelled as cheaply as possible. She anticipated that she might be out of Prague for double that time if she was ever to return at all. MI6 and the Twelve were surely flies around shit in the city now, waiting with bated breath to get a lead on either of the two women.

It _was_ only a matter of time before they decided to look elsewhere or found what they were looking for if Villanelle was stupid enough to stick around.

Eve knew she wasn’t.

-

The last of the August sun rays beamed down on her and warmed her cheeks, abated only by the chase of a soft breeze that brought with it the promise of cooler evenings to come. It had rained earlier for a while, the remnants of it evidenced by the sodden garden table that had a distinct mildew odour. It wasn’t unpleasant, but entirely reminiscent of an English summer, lashings of rain followed by faint humid heat – over and over and over again.

She had become accustomed to evenings like this, rocking back and forth on an old plastic garden chair that had seen better days. It felt like it would take almost nothing to break it, and she realised that she was tempting fate by maintaining the subtle swing back and forth, swinging more intensely until the chair screeched against the concrete beneath her. It was a metaphor for what her life had turned into – a series of unfortunate events brought on by her own recklessness and stupidity.

Forcing herself to refocus, she turned her attention to the bud light sat atop a beer mat. Her fingers stroked the condensation away from the neck of the bottle and she lifted it to her lips, taking a satisfying sip and placing it back down.

Next, she lit a cigarette and drew it up between her lips. She had picked the habit up again and noticed that she only really ever craved it when she was alone, which she was an awful lot these days. It was one of the few luxuries she afforded herself now.

She had smoked a lot in college and then hardly at all during her marriage, and these days she found herself a chain smoker, pushing 80 a week. She took a long, satisfying drag, blew the smoke out from the corner of her mouth and flicked away the ash, busying her free hand by running her fingers over the table’s splintered wood. Her father would have been so disappointed in her for adopting the nasty habit, would have reminded her that she wasn’t only wasting her life, but her money. He would have recalled cigarette prices from the top of his head and listed off alternative, better uses for such money.

Villanelle would be disappointed too.

Eve wondered if the woman would still kiss her.

She hadn’t heard from her in weeks.

Restless, she pushed the packet of Marlboro Gold’s away with a frustrated sigh and stubbed out her cigarette, lifting her beer and heading back inside to go to her room.

She headed straight for the stairs, holding onto the bannister by the time she heard “Goodnight Audrey”.

Turning her attention back to the common space, she smiled softly at Mr and Mrs Coleman, owners of the White Lion guesthouse and whispered a quiet “goodnight”.

She was occupying one of 11 rooms indefinitely; the couple having been gracious and entirely unconcerned when she had recounted a similar story of being in the area for work for an unspecified time period. It had been them to suggest that she pay for her room night-by-night by whichever means preferable to her. They asked few questions beyond her name and what she did for work. Audrey Park had rolled off of her tongue, the name of a relative long dead, and kept her job description vague with ‘project management’.

In truth, her full-time job was managing project ‘keep yourself alive’, her part-time job was working as a kitchen assistant in a restaurant located just a few minutes’ walk away. The hours were reasonable, as was the pay, and it was quiet work. Kitchen assistant in her case was essentially a glorified title for ‘pot washer’, but it was fine by her, working independently and not having to get too close to anyone. It suited her perfectly, she didn’t want to become memorable to anyone, she didn’t want anyone to pay any attention to her and so she did her job and did it well and spent the rest of her time holed up at the guesthouse.

She was on guard constantly. When she walked to and from work, when she went to the supermarket, when she walked down the hallway between the bedroom and the shared bathroom. She had even grown suspicious of Mr and Mrs Coleman at times, grown insecure about their lack of questions, about their lack of strictness when it came to who was staying in their establishment. She was even more suspicious of the other guests that had come and gone over the past couple of weeks, assuming that any and all of them had been sent to kill her in her sleep. She always locked her door and her window behind her and had resorted to buying a small pocket knife which came everywhere with her and a bigger kitchen knife that she kept down the side of her bed when she slept.

And again, she hadn’t heard from Villanelle since the first night and was growing antsy about that too. In the past, in the days before Prague and before Rome, it hadn’t been uncommon for the woman to disappear for weeks, months at a time between kills. The same frustration that had amassed within her in those times had manifested in her tenfold whilst she anxiously awaited a phone call, too aware that she could call the woman herself now but not wanting to give her the satisfaction.

Her finger had hovered over the call button a few times, when the silence, the loneliness, her own brain had become all too much. It was almost unbearable to have so much thinking time. It felt as though the weight of the world was on her shoulders and that she was simply a sitting duck, waiting for the inevitable. They would find her, they would interrogate her, they would kill her.

She was tired of Manchester.

She often wished that she hadn’t returned to England at all.

She feared using the passport again to head back into Europe but was sure that she could get lost better there.

Ultimately, she was trapped.

She distracted herself from the phone by reaching for the television remote. The TV was one of those old boxy ones that she was sure hadn’t been in circulation since the early 2000s. In fact, the room as a whole felt as though she had been transported more than twenty years into the past. The chair that sat in the corner had a similar fabric pattern to the couches that had existed in her grandmothers’ home in her childhood, in the late 1970s, and the accompanying furniture—orange-stained oak—looked like it belonged in her 1990s college dorm room. Struck again by nostalgia, she let out a frustrated sigh. She was sick of the sound of her own thoughts, deep and intrusive as though they weren’t even really hers. It didn’t feel like hers anymore. Nothing felt like _hers_ anymore.

She tried hard to invest herself in the episode of EastEnders that was showing, distract herself from her problems with the problems that belonged to fictional characters. She had no idea who anyone was, no idea what anyone was doing, never having been interested in British soap operas until she had absolutely _nothing else_ to be interested in.

Nothing was stimulating about her life currently, nothing worth living for. She was drowning in such a meaningless existence and didn’t know how much longer she could keep her head above water if she stayed in the city.

She didn’t let herself think before she pressed the call button. She was being proactive, she told herself, it was proactive, and it was in search of a way out. It had absolutely nothing to do with Villanelle and wanting to hear her voice.

Nothing to do with it.

Didn’t even cross her mind.

It rang.

It rang.

It rang.

It stopped ringing.

Her stomach sank. She couldn’t stand the silence for a second longer, and what if something was wrong? Definitely an afterthought, but she felt starved of conversation and unnerved and on edge and okay, she wanted to hear her voice.

What if Villanelle had been found first?

What if—

Her phone sounded, vibrating against her chest, making her jump.

There was a sense of urgency in her voice when she uttered out a quiet “Villanelle”, repeating it like a mantra as her finger hovered over the answer button. A deep breath, composing herself, she received the call. “Hello?”

It was quiet on the other line, except for background noise. Villanelle was out somewhere. “Hi, Eve”.

Eve could hear the smile in her voice, hated how recently Villanelle’s voice had become a comfort at all. She didn’t know when she’d stopped hating her so much and started liking her just a little. Perhaps at the Roskilde Festival when they’d fallen into each other in bed, maybe whilst nursing her back to health in Germany, or maybe even more recently. Either way, it was such a sweet relief to hear her name, her real name. Villanelle was doing for her what she had done for her weeks ago with her lips – taking her out of her head and making her think of anything else. Of her, always of her, and about how the corners of her mouth were almost definitely twitched up in a cocky grin because Eve had given in and called her, finally.

“Hi” Eve suddenly had no idea why she had called other than to hear Villanelle say her name.

Villanelle laughed. “Hi”.

A pause and then “how are your ribs?”. It was a lousy attempt at small talk, she knew that Villanelle would be fine by now, but she wanted her to talk _more._

“They are fine,”. A nanosecond and then, “how are yours?”.

Eve couldn’t help but smile at the delicious way that the r’s rolled off of Villanelle’s tongue, distracted only when she sucked in a sharp breath, mumbling incoherencies under her breath. A smirk replaced her smile when it registered what the woman had asked. It was unlike Villanelle not to be so cool-calm-collected whilst communicating with her. She was too smooth, too charming for such a slip-up. “I meant _you._ How are _you?”_

Eve laughed, “I’m fine”. She wasn’t, not at all, but she was significantly better now that she had made Villanelle trip over herself so uncharacteristically. 

“How is Prague?” She pushed herself up the bed by her heels and leaned against the headboard.

“I’m not in Prague anymore, so I have no idea”.

She wanted to ask where then, if not Prague but knew she couldn’t without the young woman prying again about her location.

“Working?”

Villanelle scoffed. “Mikael is not a good boss, I have gone away to teach him a lesson”.

“Oh,” A half-hearted laugh followed.

“What are you doing, Eve?” Villanelle asked breathlessly, Eve trying to determine whether it was suggestive or from her brisk walk, listening to the sound of the woman’s boots which were the only indicator of her fast pace.

A sheepish smile at the mention of her name again and her head fell back against the headboard.

“I’m in bed”.

“ _Oh_ ” Villanelle’s voice shifted an octave lower, seductive now without question and Eve rolled her eyes.

It was as though Villanelle was trying to let Eve set the pace and she had to laugh at yet another misunderstanding. She could understand why _that_ sentence specifically could have been misinterpreted after last time.

“No. That- that’s not why I called you”.

She could feel Villanelle pouting on the other end of the phone. 

“Then why did you? You miss me?”

It was a joke maybe, or at least half-joking and Eve fumbled over what to answer. “No… I mean, yes, no, I don’t know, I guess I miss talking to _anyone_.”

A whine from the other end. “Thank you, Eve”.

“How do you do it? How do you cope with being _alone_ all of the time?”

“Wooooow”. It was long, drawn-out, suggesting that Eve had perhaps caused offence and she wondered what she had said wrong. “Bold of you to assume I’m always alone. You know that is not the case”.

The spell broke then. The friendliness, the affection that she had felt for Villanelle for a moment dissipated and she was back to feeling as restless and frustrated as she had been before the call.

It wasn’t jealousy. It wasn’t. It was annoyance.

“Right. Well, I have some questions.” Her voice was nonchalant, uninterested now and Villanelle picked up on the change in mood straight away.

“You are cute when you are jealous”.

Eve let out an exasperated sigh. “I’m not jealous”.

“Okay”. It was mocking. Eve didn’t like her tone and debated ending the call then and there.

She ignored it, cleared her throat and read verbatim from the list of questions.

“Did you work during the separation?”

Her turn to pause, looking up and wondering why, for the love of God, she had phrased it like that.

“What _separation_?”

“Since Rome” Eve corrected herself, trying to play it off.

“Oh, _our_ separation”. Eve could feel the smirk. “A little…”.

She took a deep breath. “Doing?”

Villanelle hummed on the other end. “I will come to see you and I will answer all of your questions?”.

Villanelle’s growing understanding of Eve and apparent willingness to please her was evidenced by the fact that she decided last minute to phrase it as a question.

Eve groaned. “Just answer the question, Villanelle”.

The younger woman let out another sigh, bending to Eve’s will once again. “Fine, okay, contract stuff… nothing interesting, very boring actually… accidents”.

That piqued Eve’s interest. “So… nothing that the Twelve, or MI6 could have traced to you?”.

There was a pause on the other end whilst Villanelle mulled it over. “If I did my job properly, no”.

Eve nodded, deep in thought, quiet for a moment. “In which case, how did Mikael find you?”.

Something wasn’t adding up, but it appeared that things had already clicked in Villanelle’s mind because she laughed. “He told me that he was investigating me with the Twelve, but that he had kept his findings private because he had plans to break away from the organisation…”

“Did you believe him?”

“Of course not, Eve”

Eve chewed on her bottom lip in thought. “So why did you agree to work with him then?”

Villanelle had stopped walking by now. Eve imagined her leaning up against some bridge in some city, watching as the sky went from light to dark, cheeks flushed from the subtle chill, hair cascading down her back – “I think that we should meet to discuss this. I can come to Manchester?”.

Eve froze.

Of course, she knew.

It was the damn phone, she knew it was the phone.

A frustrated sigh and then: “Can you help me to get a new passport?”.

It didn’t come as a surprise that Villanelle was reluctant, unwilling, perhaps unable to help. She maintained that everyone she knew in England had been introduced to her by Konstantin, and therefore couldn’t be trusted. The younger woman didn’t even seem to understand _why_ Eve would go to the trouble of getting a clean passport when she had one that was more than capable of getting her to anywhere in Europe, and then she could move around the continent as she pleased without needing anything.

Eve couldn’t explain it to her either.

Couldn’t explain the irrational fear that there would be some sort of ambush at the airport when she scanned her passport again to leave, or worse, waiting for her at the other end.

Couldn’t explain the gut feeling that she had, the one that told her that something big was coming, that she needed to get out of England.

Villanelle offered to come to England to get her.

Eve didn’t want her to come to England.

Eve didn’t want to be in England herself.

The phone call concluded without any resolution, with nothing but a promise from Villanelle that she would _try_ to track someone down that could help her.

-

’100 remote places in Europe you **HAVE** to visit’.

It was an article she had landed upon after a simple Google search, but in the days following on from her less than promising conversation with Villanelle, it had been somewhat of a comfort to her, something to live by, something to look forward to – almost sacred, as important to her as scriptures were to those believing in a higher power.

She hadn’t ever been religious, not really, never less so than she was now that she reflected upon her life with too much thinking time and realised what a shitty hand she had been dealt.

Nevertheless, the article gave her something to live for, a promise to herself that she would get out of Manchester at some point and lose herself in Europe.

Every day before going to work at the restaurant, she found herself stopping by the internet café not too far away and opening up a browser complete with the article. Each day she would peruse it, study it, commit it to memory. She thought of it non-stop – first thing in the morning, throughout the day, last thing at night. Every time she had access to the internet, she would research a new place on the list, and she would make plans, travel plans, plans of where to stay, plans of what she would do to occupy her time.

It was a distraction technique she had resorted to in order to forget about the sinking feeling that had existed in the pit of her stomach since before the conversation with Villanelle but had grown and grown and grown in the days since.

She had a bad feeling, going about her days with a sense of foreboding like she knew something bad was about to happen.

It manifested itself in constant light-headedness, nausea, dizziness, a tingling sensation that reverberated throughout her entire being.

She was scared.

She hoped to a God she didn’t believe in that the apprehension was attributed to the hunch she had that Villanelle’s face would be the next familiar one that she would see. Something told her that the casual way in which the younger woman had inserted her knowledge of Eve’s whereabouts into conversation hadn’t been a mistake. In fact, she believed that it was intentional, the closest thing that she might ever get to forewarning from the woman.

She hoped it was the case and hoped more than that that she wouldn’t be seeing anyone else that she recognised any time soon.

Whenever she wasn’t thinking about all 100 of the possible places that she could end up, she thought about how abhorrent it was that she was putting so much trust in Villanelle, staying around even though the woman knew where she was. She hated that she found it in herself to trust her at all.

She considered for a brief moment that Villanelle, like Mikael, could very well still be affiliated with the Twelve and simply manipulating her to their own advantage. She could simply be a pawn in their game, as she and Villanelle had once been in Carolyn’s.

She guessed that whatever mess she was in now was far bigger than it had been two years ago in Rome.

It made sense the more she thought about it, and she was left puzzled by the fact that she had been singled out, that, to her knowledge, she was the _only one_ that had been singled out.

What was it about _her_ specifically that made her such a desired kill?

Why did they want to get rid of her?

Did she know too much?

She felt like she knew nothing at all.

She was midway through researching the Faroe Islands in Denmark which had a small, but not too small population and was characterised by sprawling cliffs, mountains and valleys. There were 18 islands in total, most of which were connected by roads and bridges and ferry services, and it seemed like the perfect place for her to settle down, enjoy the fall and then the winter. She imagined herself in a turf-topped cabin that overlooked the North Atlantic sea, and she thought back to Rome and the promises of Alaska.

She wondered if Villanelle would like it there. It snowed there too.

She allowed herself just a moment to imagine both of them living together like that, on the run from God knows what, like Villanelle had wished once upon a time. It was still inconceivable, even now. She knew that if she were to succeed at keeping herself alive for the foreseeable future, she would have to go it alone.

“ _Oh, shit_ ” she mumbled under her breath as she realised the time, having the sense to clear the browser history once again, logging off of the public computer and scrambling to get her things together. Slinging her bag over her shoulder, she all but marched out of the café and headed towards the restaurant.

It was like this, out in the open that she became the most paranoid. She imagined the ways that she could be killed out here – by a car to make it look like an accident, by a sniper on top of a roof, by a drive-by shooting, by someone lurking in the shadows. It was unnerving and she found herself glancing around nervously as she walked.

She found that she preferred being at work and felt infinitely safer there, where there were lots of other people, which meant less opportunity for anyone to come for her.

The journeys between were nothing but torture though.

The feeling was back again, and she felt the nervousness take hold of her heart and force it to pump blood around her body faster.

Maybe she’d succeed at giving herself a heart attack before anyone else got the chance.

Pushing into the restaurant, she smiled and nodded wordlessly to her boss and headed out back, changing into her white chef’s jackets that she was forced to wear even though she never came into contact with food – something to do with health and safety. She covered her hair with a hair net and a neat black cap and headed straight towards the sink.

Strange as it might seem, she loved the initial sinking of her arms, elbows deep into the industrial-sized sink. She loved the warmth of the water and the familiar feeling of being at work, surrounded by witnesses and therefore some level of _protection_. That initial sinking had become ceremonious to her in some strange way.

Before she could revel in it, the door swung open and her boss yelled orders back towards the chefs.

It made her jump and she steadied herself by bracing her hands against the edge of the sink, finally dunking them into the whirling water.

Once she’d found her rhythm, she went over her plan again in her head. She considered taking it full circle, meeting Villanelle in Paris, just briefly to utilise some of the contacts that the woman no doubt had there, to see her one last time. She would reinvent herself, maybe promise Villanelle everything and disappear into the night.

Did Villanelle even really want _everything_ anymore?

She knew that when they did part for good, she wanted to have the upper hand.

It was a good enough plan.

Looking down at the dishes that were piled up around her and ready to be washed, she sighed deeply. She longed for peace and tranquillity and safety and—

“AUDREY”.

She jumped again, slippery hands holding onto the sink as her head snapped up to see her boss looking at her expectantly.

It was especially rare for her to be singled out and she wondered if the others had ever even heard her name before now – or her fake name at least.

“Mhm?” She truly thought nothing of it, grabbing at a dish and washing it with exaggerated swooping motions to appear as though she had been working hard before he had interrupted her thoughts.

“There’s someone out front for you, take five”.

It was said so casually, and yet it resonated with her so deeply. She dropped the dish back into the sink and regarded him carefully. He looked at her as though she had grown a second head, raising his eyebrows and pointing towards the door.

“What are you waiting for?”

She didn’t know. She had no idea what was waiting for _her_ on the other side of the door.

Villanelle, maybe.

Or literally anyone else.

Her heart was beating out of her chest, and another wave of nausea crashed over her. She felt sick to her stomach.

She felt the stirrings of a panic attack, much like the one she had had after seeing Carolyn on Mikael’s computer screen and she screwed her eyes closed for a second, wiped her brow with her jacket and tried to compose herself, looking back towards her boss who held the door open, waiting for her to walk through it.

No level of preparedness could have prepared her for what was to come, as she took a hesitant step towards the door and pushed her hand into her pocket in search of the knife. Really though, using it was out of the question. It was one thing to potentially fatally injure someone in private, but in a restaurant full of witnesses, no chance.

Walking out through the door, her eyes scanned around the restaurant, not landing upon anyone she recognised, and it wasn’t until she was nudged in the direction of the bar that a big, gasping breath left her lungs and she catapulted forwards, heading right towards him.

It surely wasn’t who she had expected to see, watching him cautiously as he propped himself up against the bar, looking pensive and not quite acknowledging her presence, eyes glued towards the ground.

She stood still, watched and waited for him to look up at her. He did, regarding her equally as cautiously, a sad, lazy smile gracing his features as he lifted his hand in a shy wave.

She didn’t know what came over her when she all but ran to him, wrapping her arms around him and engulfing him in a bear hug. He stood still, arms down by his sides, only moving after a few seconds to nudge her backwards.

“Hi, Eve”

She breathed out another quiet, relieved breath and nodded. “Hi, Kenny”.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come chat on twitter -- @song4everystory


	11. Barcelona

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oooooooh. I'm back again. 
> 
> As promised, our ladies reunite in this chapter. 
> 
> Thank you for all of your comments and kudos. Enjoy!

She was momentarily distracted by the hubbub of the restaurant. It was mid-week, but it was busy nonetheless. A cacophony of sounds, background noise, forced them into a booth away from the other patrons but close by the kitchen. She heard the clatter of pots and pans and the sizzle of fried food, accompanied by the clamour of the party of fifteen that were in celebrating a 60th birthday as they laughed and shouted over one another.

Their table was decidedly less talkative, Kenny and Eve only having exchanged a glance or two since they had slid into the booth. He hadn’t ever been particularly conversational, Eve remembered, and it was one of the only similarities between him and his mother that she could recall. She had always respected Kenny’s quiet, and although he had been naïve at times, he had always been intelligent beyond comprehension and an invaluable member of her team. She had always believed that his particular skill set must have been nurtured from a very young age and there had been times since Rome that she wished to possess his capabilities herself for five minutes.

Kenny was kind, despite what he had been born into, despite the work that he did, and she knew without a doubt that if he had been sent to do anything awful to her, that he would at least be merciful.

She scooted back on the chair and noticed that the leather was sticky, grimacing as she shuffled nervously until her back was pressed into the cushion. She was feeling rather anxious and attempted to distract herself by staring at the tall glass of water sitting in front of her. Suddenly it was the most interesting thing she had ever seen in her life and she lifted it to her lips and drained half of it just to try to dispel the all-over bad feeling that had settled in her stomach. Her eyes scanned around the room next, looking to see for sure that he had come alone and that this wasn’t the ambush that she had been expecting, only premature.

Once she had scoped the room, her eyes found his brooding stare. She licked over her lips and forced a smile.

“It’s really good to see you, Kenny”. It was a clear invitation for him to interject with _why_ exactly he had shown up, and she waited with bated breath for his answer.

She couldn’t quite make out the look on his face, but he certainly didn’t seem to share in the ‘good to see you’ comment. It was perhaps anger, or sadness, or worry, or resentment. All were justified.

“You too”. It was nonchalant and Eve didn’t buy it for even a second. “It’s not a social call though, I’m afraid”.

Eve braced herself.

A pause and then “Okay?”.

Kenny looked as though he was trying to find the right words and she was about to tell him to just come right out with it when they were interrupted by the most overzealous ringtone she had ever heard.

“Sorry… I, um, sorry”. He fumbled around in his pocket and retrieved his phone, looking at it with furrowed brows and mumbling incoherencies under his breath. Eve watched, interest piqued when he declined the call, let out a sigh and placed his phone down on the table.

Was it Carolyn maybe?

Had they sent Kenny in to lull her into a false sense of security.

She had always thought that Kenny would be unable to hurt a fly.

A couple of seconds and the phone lit up again, the same obnoxious ringtone playing through the speaker, a picture of what appeared to be Elena flashing up on the screen.

Eve was beyond confused, eyebrows knitted as she tried to piece it all together in her head. She hadn’t seen Elena in years, but why would she be calling Kenny?

“Take it, it’s fine” she assured him with a nod, looking uncomfortably around the restaurant to avoid any accusation that she might be eavesdropping.

Eve heard Kenny mumble a quiet “hey”, followed by plenty of frantic babbling coming from Elena, all too quiet to hear over the loud noise of the restaurant.

Kenny’s eyebrows widened in surprise, his head nodding in understanding as he listened. “Okay, okay, calm down… have you tried changing her nappy?” A pause. “Okay, is she hungry?” Another pause. “What about rolling out her farts… you know sometimes,” he trailed off.

Eve was slowly starting to piece it all together.

“ _Have you tried singing the song?”_ It was said barely above a whisper which allowed for her to hear Elena’s reaction, her insistence that the song only worked if Kenny was singing it.

She sounded frustrated.

“I can’t right now, El” Kenny eyeballed Eve for a moment, noticed her looking at him and redirecting his gaze to her half drank glass of water.

She could hear the cries of a young baby clearly now. Once she heard them, she struggled to hear anything else.

_A baby?_

Kenny grimaced, glanced around the restaurant at Elena’s insistence that he really must sing if he wouldn’t be coming back to the hotel immediately. He pressed the phone closer to his cheek and whisper sang the words to Sucker by the Jonas Brothers.

Eve reached her hand up to her mouth to stifle a laugh and rose her eyebrows at the glare Kenny shot in her direction.

A verse and a chorus later, cheeks blushing a crimson red, Kenny assured Elena that he wouldn’t be long and that he wouldn’t sing another word through the phone. He nodded a few times, uttered a quiet ‘I love you’ and disconnected the call.

Eve was smiling, despite the tension that still existed between them.

“I’m sorry about that… I, um… Juliet is teething, it’s kind of rough at the minute”.

Eve was surprised by how much he was sharing, and by the shy smile that had snuck its way onto his face.

“No, no… don’t apologise, congratulations!” She meant it, she meant every word. “I’m very pleased for you both, Kenny”.

“Thank you”. The familiar blush stained his cheeks still and she saw him rub his own sweaty palms against his jeans, glancing around the restaurant. The smile slowly faded away, Eve recognising it as reality setting in and realising that that feeling, the one that she had observed overcome Kenny, had become all too familiar to her.

“Look, Eve… I shouldn’t be here, I can’t stay long”.

Eve nodded in understanding and braced herself.

“I don’t know why I came, I’m not even sure that you deserve it… but I’m giving you a head start. I found you, it’ll be a day or two before _they_ do”.

Eve looked at him in total surprise. “What?”.

“A day or two and you’ll be dead if you don’t leave”.

Eve sighed, exasperated and leaned forward. “Why does MI6 want me dead, Kenny? Why now?”.

She wanted answers, and it felt like finally, they were within reach.

Kenny shrugged. “You keep getting in the way, Eve… and messing things up for them, and they’re tired of it”.

Another sigh. “In the way of what? Who’s tired of it?”.

Kenny grimaced. “MI6, the Twelve, whoever… I don’t even think you can consider them two separate entities. They’re not mutually exclusive, one doesn’t exist without the other”.

Eve nodded in agreement. “Villanelle told me years ago that if we went high enough we would find that we work for the same people.”

“That’s true. I know that mum is in over her head, even she is powerless to stop it now”. Kenny looked sombre all of a sudden, saddened. “She hasn’t even met Juliet, I cut her off whilst Elena was pregnant”.

Eve reached across the table and squeezed his hand. “I’m sorry”.

Kenny retracted his hand and shrugged. “It’s fine”. He sat back. “The point is… it’s growing, Eve… the work that you and your team were doing… it’s futile. The best thing you could have done was stay at the research company in London and convince everyone you had moved on”.

His words were direct, they stung. “Kenny, I didn’t have a choice”.

He laughed. “You sound like mum. You _always_ have a choice, Eve. You think you’re helping, but you’re just adding to the problem, escalating it”.

She was stunned into silence then.

“It’s just a bunch of power-hungry people fighting their way to the top, killing anyone and anything in their way. That’s why they want you dead. You were useful once, but now you’re not”.

She remained silent, feeling like a child being told off.

He looked at her, a sad expression on his face. “I used to think that you really cared about being a good guy, but you did it because you love her, don’t you?”.

“No”.

She denied it vehemently.

“You do, Eve.”

“Don’t tell me how I feel Kenny”.

He sighed, shrugged. He kept shrugging.

“I don’t love her, but I will admit that there is a connection between us.”

He nodded then.

She sighed, disappointed that she was disappointing him.

He exhaled loudly, and she knew that he was upset with her.

“I was part of the team tasked with your surveillance after Rome, and we worked closely with the team that was in charge of Villanelle’s.”

It was more context than she had anticipated she might get.

“Are you still part of that team?”

How responsible was he for her current lack of safety was the real question?

“No. I’m not working for MI6 anymore, but I have been keeping tabs of you alongside my new job, I knew things were about to go bad… and I don’t know, I was worried”.

Eve pursed her lips. He was right that she didn’t deserve it.

“You shouldn’t be here” Eve realised that he was putting himself in an insane amount of danger to protect her.

“I know” he sighed.

She smiled sadly, reached for his hand again and this time he didn’t pull away. “Thank you for coming”.

He nodded, offered a small smile and squeezed her hand back.

He reached into his backpack, pulling out documents. “I mean it when I say that they are a day or two behind, you need to disappear, Eve, you need to stop working in Prague.”

She nodded in agreement. “I’ll be dead before the year is through, I can feel it in my bones”. She laughed sadly.

He shook his head. “You won’t, you’re smart.”

She doubted it.

She watched as he unfolded documents and looked them over, clarifying that all of the information was as it should be.

“I got you a passport, and accompanying identification. It’s a way out of this Eve, it’s the last time that I can help you”.

He handed it over to her and she regarded it sceptically.

Could she really trust him?

Why would he help her?

What was in it for him?

“I also…” he reached into his pocket for his wallet. “I don’t have much money, but there’s some, just to get you started”.

“Oh no,” she shook her head. “No Kenny, I can’t accept it.”

“You can, and you will. I want you gone, I want you out of my life for good, I don’t want to keep watching you, but I also want you to live Eve”.

It hurt her heart to hear it.

“Okay, thank you”. She took is graciously.

“I’ve been keeping an eye on Villanelle a little too” he slipped into conversation, and it took her by surprise.

“Oh?”

“Yeah, in case you turned up with her.” It made sense.

“On the train up I got a lead, she’s in Barcelona”. He reached for his phone and pulled up surveillance footage of Villanelle strutting into a hotel. Eve’s whole demeanour changed, her eyes softened as she watched it, her heart rate picked up and she could scream. She wanted to scream. “I think that you should cut her off, Eve. I think that you need to forget about the whole thing, but I don’t know how deep you are in it with her, I can’t make that decision for you. So this is her address, her room number”. He handed a slip of paper over to her and she held it carefully, read off the name of the hotel. Room 332.

“Thank you”.

She was overcome with emotion suddenly. Her eyes filled with tears, a lump formed in her throat and she choked back a sob when he gave her hand another reassuring squeeze.

“I don’t deserve it but thank you, and I’m sorry”.

He didn’t quite accept her apology, pursing his lips and withdrawing his hand.

“It has been good to see you Eve, but I hope I don’t see you again”.

She understood.

“Good luck”.

Rising to her feet, he engulfed her in a hug, and she clung on to him for a moment.

“Thank you, good luck” she replied when he pulled away and offered her another shy smile.

Standing back, she watched him head towards the door and allowed a tear to slide down her cheek.

-

She had composed herself quickly and for some absurd reason decided to stay and work the remainder of her shift. She couldn’t quite fathom that she was wasting eight hours of her head start by washing dishes, but she found it useful to use the time to sort out her head and come up with a logical plan that would work. Unlike when she had travelled to England on a whim last time and left herself in a complicated situation.

She didn’t know whether she should trust Kenny, whether she could truly believe that he had come to help her, detached from MI6 and anyone that might want her dead.

He had given her a whole new identity, but what if it was all a rouse to keep tabs on her completely, to figure out where she was going, exactly what she was doing, to creep up on her when she least expected it.

No.

It didn’t make sense and she was definitely jumping to conclusions.

If Kenny was associated with MI6, the same MI6 that wanted her dead, then why wouldn’t they just have taken care of it then and there, like they had attempted to in Hamburg.

She trusted him, against her better judgement, she trusted him.

It was 10 pm by the time the restaurant closed and approaching 11 when they had finished cleaning up the restaurant for the evening. All staff members filed into the staff room, rooting through their lockers for bags and car keys, shrugging off their white chefs’ jackets and throwing them into the laundry basket.

They chatted tiredly to one another, discussing plans for the rest of the evening, discussing plans for the following day, even having the courtesy to ask her.

“Oh, um… nothing, I have a shift in the afternoon”.

She didn’t even mention that she wouldn’t be returning, planning on keeping up the act until she was safely through airport security with her new alias.

“See you tomorrow” she mumbled to her boss as they filed past him to exit the restaurant one by one. She stood beside it and reached for her cigarettes as she waited for her taxi to show up. She was way too paranoid to walk home alone at this hour, given that her life was at best a ticking time bomb, and that if Kenny was off by even a few hours, they could be waiting for her around any street corner, or even at the guesthouse.

She had to approach the situation carefully.

“Goodnight Audrey” her boss mumbled as he passed by and climbed into his car. She nodded towards him as she took a long drag of her cigarette.

She rolled her shoulders and realised that every one of her muscles was aching. She was tired, exhausted at the mere thought of having to trek back to Europe, to try to get lost again – completely, totally this time.

As much as she tried not to think about it, there was the small matter of Villanelle that she had yet to contend with. She didn’t want to make this about her like so many other things, decisions, impulses had been about her over the last few years, but it was inevitable that she would have to come to a decision sooner rather than later.

It was raining, she finally realised, and she ducked backwards for cover, the lit cigarette her only source of light after her boss had pulled away.

It was slightly ominous, she thought and pushed the nervousness away by dwelling on decisions that had to be made urgently.

She ought to forget about Villanelle entirely, move on from the whole thing elsewhere, do exactly what Kenny had suggested and leave it in the past, start a new life for herself. Despite knowing that it was the smartest thing to do, every part of her wanted to check in with the woman, wanted to surprise her like she had surprised her in Paris – just with less stabbing this time.

She didn’t know what to do, at the same time as knowing exactly what she was going to do.

Kenny knew what she would do too, and that was infuriating.

She ought to be smarter, but she couldn’t go through with walking away from Villanelle without a word, she had done that once before.

She owed her a proper goodbye, at least.

She heard a car, and then headlights dazzled her. She reached her hands up to cover her eyes and waited until it had pulled up alongside her to stub out her cigarette, sliding into the back of the taxi.

“Hi” she smiled to the driver. It was a genuine smile and she recognised the flutter of excitement in her stomach. She was excited for the first time since the last time she spoke to Villanelle and she was excited at the prospect of seeing her again, and soon.

“The White Lion guesthouse, please, and then if you wouldn’t mind waiting I need to get to the airport?”.

The driver grunted in the front and agreed but told her that he would be leaving the meter on. English generosity was second to none, but she nodded in agreement and sank back into the seat.

She pulled out her phone and checked for word from Villanelle, unsurprised when she hadn’t been in touch. She sighed with the corners of her lips upturned at the thought of taking her by surprise again. She liked doing that, she liked chasing her as much as she hated chasing her.

The driver pulled up in the guesthouse car park and she slid out, heading inside and greeting Mr and Mrs Coleman.

“I’m afraid I’ll be leaving this evening, heading back to London,” she told them with a smile. It was only a matter of time before Carolyn and her cronies came knocking, and she thought that it might throw them off course for a while if they got word that she had travelled back to London.

She settled her final bill, thanked them profusely and headed upstairs to collect all of her things, giving the room a quick once over. She discarded her knives in the bin and took the trash bag out with her, putting it in the giant dumpster out back before sliding back into the taxi.

“Thank you,” Eve said, her smile only widening the closer they got to the airport.

When he pulled up into a drop off bay, he stopped the meter and her eyes widened in surprise that it had, at some point, surpassed the £50 mark. She reached for her purse and pulled out some of the cash given to her by Kenny. She felt bad for having accepted it but knew she might need money whilst she looked for employment wherever she ended up.

She paid up, thanked him and slipped out of the cab, retrieving her few belongings from the boot of the car and walking in the direction of departures.

It was a spur of the moment thing, but she reached into her bag and pulled out the burner phone, dropping it to the ground like she had seen Villanelle do with the one given to her by Mikael and stomping on it. She smiled down at it, broken beyond repair and picked up the fragments, tossing them into the bin before heading inside.

She was going to surprise her if it was the last thing she ever did.

The next flight leaving for Barcelona was leaving within the hour. She checked her watch, shook her head knowingly. There was no way she was getting on that flight, but she figured to try nevertheless and approached the EasyJet desk.

The woman, uninterested and obviously sleepy, informed her that whilst there was space on the flight, it was unlikely she would make it through security in time.

“I will run” Eve argued. “I don’t have a bag to check, I will run, and I will make the flight”.

The woman pursed her lips in response, eyed her and shrugged, obviously beyond caring about protocol as she checked her passport, the one given to her by Kenny, and took payment.

Even if this was a trap, there was simply no time for them to get to her.

Boarding pass in hand, she all but sprinted to the escalator, going through border control, then through security and then all the way through the airport towards her gate.

The flight was already boarded, pretty much, a few stragglers that had been caught up in duty-free passing by to enter the plane whilst she took a second to catch her breath.

“Safe travels” the assistant smiled towards her as she handed over her boarding pass without realising the weight her words held.

Eve thanked the Gods, thanked Kenny as she headed onto the plane to find her seat.

-

She could have slept on the flight, given that it was past midnight, but she found herself buzzing with excitement at the prospect of turning up to find a surprised and sleepy Villanelle.

She wasn’t expecting her, she realised. As far as Villanelle knew, Eve was awaiting word from her about a new passport.

She knew that she ought to curb her excitement, that she should bear in mind that she could be heading towards her death, but the surveillance footage had certainly shown Villanelle at the hotel.

What if she was part of it all too?

That really would have been a dramatic twist to the tale.

She was excited, as much as she tried not to be, she was, staring out into nothingness for much of the two-and-a-half-hour flight.

She distracted herself by people watching, bemused as she watched a man’s head loll against his wife’s shoulder, soft snores emanating from him as she stroked her fingers against his neck.

Villanelle had snuggled up to her like that once before, and she wondered whether people had regarded them similarly.

It was sickening to watch, so she looked away.

She hated, hated, _hated_ how everything had become about her again, but as they lowered from the sky, she recognised the butterflies in her stomach and the longing in her heart, just wanting to see her, wanting to see Villanelle react to seeing her after months apart, wanting to see the excitement that she felt at seeing the woman reflected back at her.

She was impatient.

She wanted to be the first off of the plane, fighting her way through the crowds once they’d alighted and all but running towards passport control.

It was close to 4 am and she was exhausted, but adrenaline carried her all the way out to the taxi rank where she waited in line for the next available car. It pulled up alongside her, a bleary-eyed man speaking at her in Spanish and she furrowed her brows.

“Um, English?” she asked, realising that she barely had any Euros on her, only what she had left over from her trip to Austria all of them months ago to locate Villanelle.

“Yes. Where are you going?” he asked.

She reached into her purse for the little slip of paper and read off with the worst pronunciation “Hotel Fairmont Rey Juan Carlos I”.

He laughed at her and nodded his head for her to get into the car.

It couldn’t have been longer than a ten-minute journey when he pulled up and asked her for €20. She managed to make the payment with a single note and some change at the bottom of her purse, even handing him a £10 note as a tip, and apologising profusely that she didn’t have more local currency to offer him.

He looked at her curiously but shrugged his shoulders in thanks.

The excitement was replaced by fear as she read off room 332 over and over again, committing it to memory.

There was so much to fear, she realised.

It was 4 am, or approaching, and what if it wasn’t Villanelle at all? What if it was Villanelle and she wasn’t alone?

So many what-ifs, and only one way to find out.

She entered the elevator.

She pressed the button for the third floor.

Her heart was beating hard in her chest.

She watched the elevator climb in numbers.

One.

Two.

Three.

Ding!

The doors slid open and she walked out into the dim-lit hallway, her heart in her mouth by now.

Villanelle’s room was located three doors down from the elevator, the suddenness of it all inspiring panic in her. She stood outside for a moment and just _listened,_ hoping for a clue, and sighing at the silence.

She ran a hand through her hair to smooth it down before reaching forward and knocking gently.

It surely wouldn’t be Carolyn, and if it was, she would scream to alert the other guests, she decided.

She waited impatiently, reaching forward to knock again when the door opened just a crack.

It was dark inside the room, but she knew those eyes anywhere and smiled despite herself.

“Hi”.

The door swung open then, Villanelle coming into full view, confused and stunned and definitely sleepy. She looked so cute, Eve’s heart ached in her chest.

“Eve” It was warm, familiar, tired.

“Hi” Eve spoke again, softer.

“ _Eve_ ” Villanelle stepped towards her, wrapped her arms around her, cuddled into her. Eve smiled and wrapped her free arm around her, patted her back. “What are you doing here?”.

“Later, let me in, I’m tired”.

Villanelle stepped back and looked her over, rubbing her tired eyes but waking up some more. “Of course”. She stepped aside and gestured for Eve to enter.

She walked into the room, engulfed in _Villanelle._ She was everywhere. She breathed in deeply and sighed. “I cannot believe that you are here, Eve… how did you know?” Villanelle asked from behind her and she turned around, putting down her bag and smiling.

“Later, I said, go back to bed”.

“But I am awake”.

She looked, sounded like a child then and Eve tilted her head to the side, overwhelmed by her affection for the woman.

“I am tired”.

Villanelle conceded, nodding reluctantly and admiring her. “Okay then, we should sleep”.

Her eyes didn’t leave Eve as she headed back towards the bed, in complete disbelief, and it made Eve feel powerful to have successfully surprised her.

She wondered just how much she could surprise her, reaching into her bag for her pyjamas and her toiletries, placing them down on the table. “Missed me?”.

Villanelle, lying beneath the sheets again, tilted her head to the side and smiled. “Of course”.

Eve raised her eyebrows and reached for her jacket, pushing it off of her shoulders and hanging it over the back of the chair.

Villanelle watched.

Eve smiled, eyes not leaving Villanelle’s as she reached for her shirt and dragged it up and over her head.

She heard Villanelle gasp, but the woman said nothing, only bit down into her lower lip.

Eve reached back and unclasped her bra, pulling it away from her body and leaving herself topless.

Villanelle whined, and Eve watched her sit up some more in the bed, her eyes raking over Eve, drinking her in.

Her jeans went next, and she stood before her in nothing but her underwear.

Villanelle’s eyebrows furrowed as she tried to exercise some self-restraint, another groan leaving her lips when Eve reached for her pyjama top.

“No. Come here” Villanelle beckoned.

Eve’s eyebrows raised curiously.

“What was that?”.

“Come here” Villanelle demanded, sitting forward, the sheets falling down to cover her legs only. “Please”.

Eve licked over her lips and smirked. “Well done, for remembering your manners, but I need to use the bathroom”.

She strutted off with her toiletries but left her pyjamas behind.

She had no idea where the confidence had come from, or what had possessed her to undress in front of the woman, but the reaction had made her feel good nonetheless.

She peed, brushed her teeth, washed her face and tied her hair up ready to sleep.

She gave herself another second, insecurity creeping in as she walked back into the bedroom, Villanelle propped up against the pillows and smirking at her.

She made for her pyjamas, but Villanelle reached over the end of the bed and caught her hand, dragging her down onto the bed. “Do not even think about it”.

Eve couldn’t help but laugh. “I’m not sleeping naked”.

“You are not naked”. Villanelle countered, a pout on her face and Eve had to admit that she wasn’t wrong.

She rolled her eyes and looked down at a fully clothed Villanelle. “Hardly fair”.

It was unintentionally flirty, intended to be in protest to her state of undress, and she certainly hadn’t expected for Villanelle to reach down to drag her own clothes off, leaving her stark naked in bed beside her.

“Oh god” Eve groaned, trying not to but dragging her eyes shamelessly over her body anyway.

Villanelle smiled, slung her arm around Eve’s waist and nuzzled her nose against Eve’s. “I missed you very much”.

It was sincere, Eve thought, and she realised then just how surprising it was to have found Villanelle here alone.

Eve pulled back just a little, putting a little bit of distance between them. “Yeah?”.

“Yeah”.

She smiled.

“How come you are here?”. It was soft, not pushy, only quietly curious and Eve couldn’t help herself when she reached to stroke Villanelle’s hair out of her face.

“Kenny told me that you were here, I will explain properly tomorrow, but you don’t have to worry” she assured her.

Villanelle frowned. “Kenny? Carolyn’s little boy?”

Eve laughed “Yes. But they are estranged, he doesn’t work for MI6 anymore”.

Villanelle was obviously suspicious, humming to herself in thought, eyes glued to Eve’s chest.

She laughed, pushed her fingers into the loose blonde locks and tilted her head up to look at her.

“Pervert”.

Villanelle smirked at her, tried again to close the distance between them, only for Eve to pull back once more.

She smirked. “Goodnight Villanelle”. It was whispered, and she rolled over onto her other side so that she was faced away from the younger woman.

The smirk stayed on her lips, not trusting Villanelle to leave it there. Her silence spoke a thousand words.

A moment passed, a fleeting moment in which Eve wondered whether she might leave it there, until the blonde reached a hand up to her head and pried the hair tie out of her hair, freeing her curls.

She didn’t move, allowing the woman to do as she pleased.

The same hand stroked through them, smoothed them down, the bed shifting as Villanelle moved closer to her.

Seconds later, she felt the woman’s face press into her hair, feeling the tip of her nose at the nape of her neck, inhaling deeply and placing a feather-light kiss there, her arm encompassing her again, a hand rested against her stomach.

Eve sighed, relaxed into the feeling, closed her eyes with a dopey grin on her face.

“Goodnight, Eve” the young woman whispered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We all need a friend like Kenny.
> 
> Come chat on twitter -- @song4everystory


	12. We are not in a movie

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SO. Looks like university has managed to get me back on a semi-regular update schedule with this fic because I'd rather do literally anything over uni work. Mondays seem to fit best around all of my commitments, but I know that after saying that I'll never manage to update on a Monday again, so basically Monday's are NOT when I'll be updating the fic (wink wink). 
> 
> Thanks once again for all of the comments, I'm so pleased that you all loved the last chapter!
> 
> I apologise in advance.

Eve wasn’t a morning person, plain and simple.

Her hatred of mornings had begun with particularly early ones in her teens, propped up at the kitchen table by her mom whilst it was still dark out, sleeping her way through a bowl of Froot Loops whilst she waited for the school bus. After that, no matter how hard she tried, she was useless first thing in the morning.

In the years that followed her marriage to Niko, after they had become accustomed to a particular routine from which they never strayed, she realised how dull and monotonous her life had become. She understood that it was a life that simply wasn’t worth waking up for anymore. Dissatisfaction in her marriage, her job at MI5, had worked collectively to make her hate mornings all the more. Finally, MI6 and Villanelle had rendered her incapable of sleeping at all, making the waking up part even harder.

She was nothing short of no good before two of three cups of coffee.

She had learned over the last couple of years how to function efficiently with little to no sleep, thanks to coffee. Since Rome, and certainly since Manchester, her circumstances had left her feeling as though death was imminent, waiting for her at every street corner and often had her waking with a start. Sometimes she swore that she felt eyes on her and would look towards the foot of the bed. Often, she had climbed out of it and searched every inch of the space that she was occupying for the younger woman. In Manchester, she had called herself crazy and put it down to wishful thinking, sure that if she were to wake to anyone at the foot of her bed, she probably wouldn’t live long enough to realise what was happening.

It felt as though morning had broken hours ago in Barcelona, and yet Eve was still fully immersed in the experience of good, satisfying sleep. Her arms were wrapped around a pillow, her face pressed against it as she inhaled the faint scent of geranium blossoms and vanilla.

She had slept too long, evidenced by the fact that her body had all but melted into the mattress, bones aching and stiff from where they had been still for a long time. She reached her arms up above her head to wake them up, yawning as she went.

She thought that she was probably still dreaming when she felt the gentle graze of fingertips over her ribs, tracing all the way down to her hip and back up again. The lightness, tenderness of it sent a shiver down her spine and she sighed, cuddling her pillow closer and pressing back against another body.

She froze, eyes shooting open in realisation, her cheeks heating up when she remembered her current state of undress and the fact that Villanelle had cuddled up against her before they had drifted off to sleep the night before.

She lay still, taking in every touch, wishing that the younger woman was still asleep so that she could process this privately, work out exactly what she might say, what she might do.

The woman must have stayed curled around her all night, feeling her stretch out similarly behind her, mewling like a cat as she scooted even closer until Eve could feel the press of bare breasts against her back, feel the tightening arm around her mid-section and could feel the soft, sweet kiss of Villanelle’s breath against her shoulder.

There was a hint of awkwardness, the same kind that might exist after a one-night stand. It was out of the question that Eve would get up and leave, but would they simply ignore the elephant in the room? The fact that this was the closest they had been ever before, and that they had both chosen it.

Every moment with Villanelle was charged and she wondered for a brief moment how much more intense this feeling would have been if she had been intimate with her.

At the same time as feeling like a one-night stand, it felt like so much more than that. It felt comfortable and familiar and peaceful, the irony not lost on Eve as she reached down and pulled the covers up around them, feeling too exposed all of a sudden.

“Good morning”. Villanelle interrupted her thought process, lifted a hand to stroke Eve’s hair aside so that she could press a gentle kiss against her neck.

“Mhm” Eve agreed. She wasn’t yet awake enough for words and wasn’t even sure what she would say, shy all of a sudden.

It was quiet for a brief moment, Villanelle’s fingers continuing their dance across her skin. Shivering again, Eve rolled over onto her back, holding the sheets protectively around her body. She could tell that Villanelle had been awake for a while, the woman wearing a shit-eating grin on her face that told Eve she was far too pleased with herself. She couldn’t fight off the smile that made its way on to her face either.

Villanelle reached between them for Eve’s hand, intertwining their fingers.

“You slept for a long time”

It was an observation, but the pout on Villanelle’s face gave away her disappointment.

Eve sighed. “Well… I was tired”.

“Okay” Villanelle spoke, watching on as Eve lifted their joined hands to her lips and grazed her lips across Villanelle’s bruised knuckles.

“You’ve been fighting?”

Villanelle shrugged, eyes not leaving Eve’s for even a second. “Not really”.

Eve hummed in disbelief, looking up at the woman, watching as Villanelle’s eyes left hers, only to look down at her lips. It was forced this time, when she evaded her kiss, turning her head just in time for soft lips to land on her cheek and sighing to herself.

She couldn’t remember why she had come, but she wondered now just how she would leave.

“I’m hungry and I need a shower” Eve said, slipping away from Villanelle who had pressed her face against Eve’s neck, groaning out in frustration.

“I would rather stay in bed”. Villanelle’s nose was scrunched up when she finally looked up at her again, wearing a puppy dog expression that _almost_ worked, but not quite.

“Be my guest” Eve exclaimed, wrapping herself up in the sheet and slipping out of bed, ignoring Villanelle’s protests as she sauntered off towards the bathroom.

Villanelle had played herself.

-

“Let me take a picture of you” Villanelle positioned Eve just so against the backdrop of the La Sagrada Familia church in the centre of Barcelona. They were stood no more than one hundred metres away, outside of the Gaudi Bakery where they had decided to indulge in breakfast despite it being late afternoon.

“No Vill” Eve protested. Thousands of tourists seemed to be swarming around them, and without knowing when she had become afraid of particularly large crowds, Eve found herself wanting to be anywhere but amongst the hustle and bustle of the city.

Despite her hesitation, she took in the doe-eyed expression on Villanelle’s face and decided to humour her, standing there awkwardly and plastering on a smile for the woman who watched her through her phone, beaming back at her as she took pictures.

It was cute, really and unnerving at the same time.

Villanelle was soon flagging down a passer-by, gesturing between Eve and herself.

“Nos puede tomar una foto?”

Eve waited, watched as Villanelle handed over her phone to the man, walking over to stand beside Eve. Her eyebrows furrowed when Villanelle’s arms wrapped around her, the younger woman whispering for her to relax. Eve thought that an impossible task, but posed for the photo regardless, living with the knowledge that the man and his wife likely believed them to be a couple, oblivious to the complexity of their relationship.

It was normal, almost.

“Gracias” Villanelle breathed out, removing her arms from around a stunned Eve and making her way back towards the man.

“¿Quieres una foto?”

Eve realised that Villanelle was offering to take a photo of the couple in return. She was uncharacteristically patient, waiting whilst the man fiddled with his camera. He handed it over to her and Eve half expected her to make off with it, but she stood, snapping pictures of the couple against the same backdrop.

To Eve, to anyone watching, Villanelle looked like any other upstanding member of society.

It was shocking, really.

Eve trailed behind her into the restaurant, waiting with her at the counter whilst Villanelle ordered coffee, directing them towards a table by the window and handing her a menu.

Eve eyed her. “Well, that was weird”.

Villanelle looked up from her own menu, smirking at her. “Why?”.

“Just… different person, same accent… that’s new”.

Villanelle shook her head, frowning a little.

“Same person Eve, you just do not know me very well”.

Eve raised her eyebrows and wondered if that might be true.

“Or you do not wish to know me like that, maybe”.

It was Eve’s turn to frown. “What is that supposed to mean?”.

“I don’t know. Maybe you only like me when you are afraid of me”.

Eve scoffed.

“I’m not afraid of you”.

Villanelle was smirking again. “Good”.

“Why did you take that picture with me anyway?”.

Villanelle, as though reminded of it, pulled her phone out of her pocket.

“Do couples not take pictures together?”.

Eve hummed. “I guess, but we are not a couple Villanelle”.

Villanelle looked up from her phone, a flash of disappointment on her face, soon masked by a smile.

“You are right, so I will delete it”.

“No” Eve interjected, reaching across the table to still Villanelle’s hand. “Let me see it”.

She pried the phone from Villanelle’s hand, clicking on the picture, surprised to see that her own arm was wrapped loosely around Villanelle. She hadn’t remembered doing that.

“Stop thinking too much, you do not have to read into everything” Villanelle interrupted her thoughts again, took the phone off of her and shoved it back into her pocket. “I am happy to see you, Eve”.

Eve sighed, smiled back at her and nodded.

-

Villanelle had earnestly declared her desire to visit the Magic Fountain of Montjuïc with Eve on their tour through the city. Eve didn’t mind either way, but was pretty set on _not_ seeing it, and heading back to the hotel instead when she learned that it would take them over an hour to walk there.

“What’s so interesting about a water fountain anyway?” Eve asked impatiently as she trailed behind Villanelle who happily snapped pictures of literally everything they passed.

“I don’t know, but why not visit it? We are on vacation!” Villanelle was so animated, so excited.

Eve stopped dead in her tracks.

“Villanelle”.

The younger woman stopped too, looked back at her.

“What?”

“You seem to have got things a little twisted. This is _not_ a vacation, we are technically on the run”. It was a gentle reminder, but a definite indication as to where her head was at.

Villanelle frowned and made her way towards her. “Depends on how you look at it, Eve. I am having a good time, sightseeing with my favourite person… so I am on vacation, no?”.

It warmed Eve, a smile making its way onto her lips which she chased away with an eye roll.

“You are a child, Villanelle.” Eve laughed. “You will have to face reality sooner or later, but lead the way, I guess”.

It was almost 8 pm by the time they reached the fountain, Villanelle buying two beers from a street vendor and handing one to Eve as they weaved their way through the crowds of people waiting to see the show.

Leaning up against the bridge, Villanelle sighed.

“After this, do you want to watch a movie with me? We can get some popcorn and some champagne and rent one at the hotel?”

Eve eyed her, powerless to argue seeing as Villanelle was letting her stay with her, shrugging her shoulders.

“Sure”.

As it crept closer to 8, the crowds grew thicker, everyone packing closer together as they awaited… whatever it was they were waiting for.

Eve saw Villanelle growing frustrated at the people either side of them when they attempted to push them out a way to secure a spot at the front.

“Ignore it” Eve warned her, reaching for her arm and pulling her in just a little closer.

Villanelle brightened immediately, wrapping her arm around Eve’s neck from behind, kissing her cheek before dropping her arm to rest around Eve’s waist.

It was intimate, romantic even, and Eve shook her head in surprise.

“You realise that you just gave up your spot?” Eve looked back at Villanelle, who looked at her with a hopeless smile on her face.

“I do not care”.

The show started, music playing, lights flashing, the water dancing within the fountain. It was reminiscent of the Disney fireworks that she had observed many moons ago on vacation with her family, only less impressive. Eve had never been particularly sold on tourist attractions but sighed when Villanelle’s arms tightened around her, her chin resting on Eve’s shoulder.

She patted the woman’s arm and took a sip of her beer. “You like it?”

“Mhm” Villanelle nodded, mesmerized by it until Eve turned her head to look at her properly.

“What?” Villanelle asked.

“Nothing” Eve shook her head, smiled at her.

Villanelle reached for Eve’s cheek, stroking it, looking down towards her lips again.

“We’re not in a movie” Eve reminded her.

“We could be if we wanted”.

Eve rolled her eyes, leaned in and pressed a chaste kiss against Villanelle’s lips.

“You are a fool”.

Slipping out of the woman’s arms, she offered her a hand and dragged her out through the crowd.

Villanelle, dazed, could do nothing but follow behind her.

-

“Where do you want to go after this?” Villanelle asked from her side of the bed when they were about halfway through watching 13 Going on 30.

She had been pretty engrossed in the movie up until that point, Eve had thought. Neither of them had spoken a word since it started, and they had miraculously managed to stay at least two feet apart on the bed.

“What do you mean?” Eve asked, confused. “I’m pretty tired V, I’m going to sleep after this”.

“No, I mean… after Barcelona? Where would you like to go next?”

“With you?” Eve’s eyes widened in realisation.

They were yet to talk about why Eve had shown up, and she was quite frankly shocked that Villanelle still hadn’t asked.

“Well… yeah?” Villanelle asked, confusion painting her features too.

Eve hadn’t thought about it really.

She didn’t know why she had come, only that she had wanted to.

She hadn’t planned to stick around with Villanelle, but perhaps it was inevitable.

The increased risk of danger from outside forces be damned, the day had given Eve a glimpse into life with Villanelle without the murder, with a shred of normalcy amidst the absurdity.

Was Villanelle capable of a normal life?

Could it work?

Could it work for an extended period of time?

Would Villanelle get bored?

What would they be to one another?

Pushing the overwhelming thoughts away, she worried her lip between her teeth.

“I like the Faroe Islands, in Denmark”.

Villanelle hadn’t expected an answer it seemed, especially somewhere so specific, because she tilted her head to the side as if trying to determine whether or not Eve was being serious.

“You thought about it?”

Eve nodded.

“I’ve never heard of it”. Villanelle said, but with a burst of excitement that had her reaching out for her laptop to look it up. “What is it like?” she asked, too impatient to find out for herself, looking at Eve expectantly as her laptop loaded up.

Eve cleared her throat. “Well… it snows, and it’s cold, and it’s small… disconnected” she attempted to explain.

Villanelle gestured for her to continue.

“We could rent a cabin on the cliff edge. There’s sheep everywhere Vill, you could probably hunt them, or fish… if you’re into that” Eve shrugged.

Villanelle looked at her with a sad smile. “… nobody would bother us there”.

Eve smiled back similarly and nodded.

They were both transported back to Rome for a second, silence falling between them.

Villanelle’s laptop whirred to life, their silence interrupted by a series of pings, alerting Villanelle to notifications.

Eve watched as she clicked around on the computer and opened a bunch of encrypted files.

“What is it?” Eve asked, still smiling at the thought of the Faroe Islands, oblivious to the worry etched across Villanelle’s features.

Villanelle’s jaw dropped open as she took in whatever was on the laptop, promptly closing it and jumping up off of the bed.

“We need to go”.

It was all she said as she pulled her suitcase out from the closet, dumping it on top of the bed and frantically filling it with her stuff.

“What?” Eve sat up, taken by surprise. “Why? What’s going on?”.

“Do not just sit there Eve, I mean it, we have to go”. There was an urgency in her voice that unnerved Eve, it wasn’t like Villanelle to panic. The younger woman took a moment, tried to compose herself, smiled at her. “To the Faroe Islands, we must go now”.

Eve was unconvinced, looking curiously at Villanelle, confused as to how the situation had escalated so quickly, going from nought to one hundred in less than a minute.

“I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what is going on”.

Despite her calm exterior, Eve’s heart was already almost beating out of her chest and when it seemed she wouldn’t get any answers from Villanelle, she reached for the laptop.

“Don’t, Eve” Villanelle warned, a stern expression on her face that soon softened. “Don’t”.

Eve felt herself getting hot, her hands suddenly clammy, her breath short. She looked at Villanelle expectantly and didn’t say another word, waiting for her to explain, still holding on to the laptop.

“It is Kenny” Villanelle relented, swallowing thickly, not meeting her eyes. “He is dead”.

Eve saw red, a gasp leaving her lips as she looked towards Villanelle in disbelief, shaking her head.

How would she know?

The woman said nothing else, looking at her. Her distinct lack of detail wound Eve up, annoyed her, provoked her to open up the laptop to see for herself exactly what it was Villanelle had seen.

She slapped Villanelle’s hand away when she tried to grab for it, taking in the images on the screen and promptly slapping a hand over her mouth.

Her chest heaved and she screamed into the palm of her hand.

There on the screen was Kenny, sprawled inelegantly on the floor, killed by what appeared to be a single gunshot wound between the eyes. There was a pool of blood around his head, his face lacked colour, his eyes were wide, alarmed, his jaw slack.

Thoughts and feelings rushed at her all at once. She cried, sobbed into her hand as she thought of Kenny begging for his life, using his new family to try to appeal to someone’s better nature.

Who could do that to a new father?

Worse, it probably had Carolyn’s name written all over it.

Her heart raced.

She cried, covered her face with her hands to block out the images when she finally realised that this was _her_ fault, that the reason Kenny was dead was because he had helped her.

She retched, covering her mouth with her hand again as she choked on a sob, retching again and taking off in the direction of the bathroom.

Villanelle finally moved, paces behind her, collecting Eve’s hair in her hand as she threw up the contents of her stomach into the toilet, stroking her back soothingly.

“You need to calm down, Eve, you need to breathe, we have to go” Villanelle insisted, Eve turning her head to glare at her.

“It is my fault Villanelle” Eve reminded her, sobbing again, wiping her hand against her mouth. “He is dead because of me”.

“No, Eve… you cannot blame yourself”.

Eve looked at her incredulously. “Villanelle” she was being serious, standing up and reaching for the small glass on the edge of the sink, filling it with water and rinsing out her mouth. Her hands were shaking, she was still crying. “He came looking for me to help me and now he is dead. If he hadn’t come, he would be… singing to his baby right now”.

She covered her face with her hands, cried, lacking the energy required to protest when Villanelle wrapped her up, stroking her back and leading her back through to the bed, sitting her down on it.

“Kenny made a choice, Eve. That is not your fault, he should have been more careful”.

Eve shook her head, unsurprised by Villanelle’s lack of sympathy but bothered by it all the same.

“Who sent you the pictures?”.

She sniffed, looking down at Villanelle who was kneeling in front of her. The woman stood in response to the question, resuming her packing.

“Who sent them Villanelle?” Eve stood behind her, eyes boring into Villanelle’s skull.

Villanelle turned around and sighed.

“I guess Carolyn or someone, I don’t know? They are sending a message”.

Eve sighed, frustrated. “Stop being evasive, stop it. This is _my_ fault, so why aren’t they sending me the message?”.

It made less sense the more that she thought about it.

“I am sorry that you are upset” Villanelle stepped closer to her, Eve took a step back.

“Why are you _sorry,_ Villanelle? For once you are blameless, it is my fault. Why did they send the pictures to you? How do they know that I am here?”

Villanelle wore an expression that could be mistaken for guilt if it was worn by anyone else, reaching for Eve’s hand.

“I have been watching them, and I guess they got it out of him… before” Villanelle trailed off, not needing to say it.

Eve frowned. “Watching who?”

“All of them”.

Eve shook her head, none of it making any sense.

“Why have you been watching them? How did Kenny know?”.

“I was watching them because they were watching us, Eve”. Villanelle argued, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Eve let out another sob, plagued by images of Kenny, haunted by their parting words.

“You can blame me if it will make you feel better”. Villanelle offered with a shrug.

Eve narrowed her eyes on the woman. “You are making no sense”.

“It is not your fault… but you called me, asked for help and I told you that I couldn’t help you from so far away” Villanelle sighed. “It is easier to make people do what you want when they have a gun pointed at their head, but you didn’t want me to come”.

Villanelle was a picture of innocence at that moment, shrugging her shoulders, another puppy dog pout on her lips.

“What did you do?”

It was a simple question, requiring a simple answer to clear this whole thing up.

“Well… it was really just a flying visit.” Villanelle maintained.

Eve screamed. “What did you do?”

It shocked Villanelle into submission, the young woman holding up her hands. “I had been watching, and I knew that Kenny was not associated with Carolyn anymore, so… I gave him a gentle nudge” she explained. “I asked him to help you”.

Eve laughed, she laughed, realisation setting in. She shook her head at the woman, stepping closer to her, reaching to grasp her jaw.

“He didn’t want to come, did he? You told him where I was”.

“It is not my fault, Eve. I was careful, he must not have been”.

“You threatened him to help me?” Eve clarified, her fist meeting Villanelle’s jaw when the woman offered a shy nod.

“Ouch, Eve… stop, enough.” Villanelle groaned, fighting Eve off when she swung for her again.

“You set him up” Eve cried. “You just… you can’t help yourself can you?”

Villanelle breathed in deeply, obviously irritated. “I did what you asked me to do. It is not my fault that he was not careful. If I had not have intervened then you would be dead”. Villanelle shot back at her.

Eve was angry. She was so angry. “And Kenny?”.

Villanelle sighed, offered another shrug of her shoulders, pursed her lips. “Kenny is… collateral damage, and not my concern”.

That earned her another harsh slap across the face.

“You…” Eve started, mulling it all over. “You wanted me to choose you, that’s what this was about”.

Villanelle shook her head furiously. “That had nothing to do with it”.

“You had the audacity to act _surprised_ when I showed up here” Eve laughed, rubbing at her temples.

“I _was_ surprised” Villanelle argued.

Eve scoffed “Sure you were. You gave Kenny my location, got him to get me a passport, and gave him your location. What were you hoping would happen, Villanelle?”

“I was hoping that you would come” Villanelle’s voice was soft then. “But I _was_ surprised, Eve… I did not think that you would”.

Eve laughed. She laughed and laughed and laughed and then she cried.

She cried for Kenny, and she cried because she hated that she had allowed this to happen again. She cried because just minutes before, she had entertained the idea of allowing Villanelle to accompany her on her travels.

They just weren’t wired the same way. 

She had been so naïve.

“Eve, I was so pleased to see you… but I just did what you wanted, no expectations, nothing”.

Eve shook her head. “I don’t buy it”.

Villanelle huffed, at a loss. “I did what you wanted, I stayed away from Manchester like you asked, got you the help that you needed… what did you expect me to do, Eve? No one is on our side anymore, we have nobody. You would not use the passport that you had, I had to get you out of there somehow. It was the easiest, least dangerous route possible." A huge, gasping breath left Villanelle's lips as she looked towards Eve, pleading with her. "I was just trying to help”.

Eve pursed her lips. “If you thought that you had done the right thing, then you would have told me about it”.

“I am sorry for that” Villanelle sighed, defeated “I did not want you to be angry at me for coming to London. I am _trying_ to be what you want, I am _trying_ to listen to you, to respect your decisions. Eve, I am doing the best that I can, but it is very hard to please you”.

Eve rubbed at her nose, took a deep breath and wiped furiously at her teary eyes.

“It is my fault” she spoke again, soft this time, letting it sink in. “I never should have trusted you. I should have known that you would do this again”.

Villanelle shook her head, reaching for her, sighing desperately when Eve shrugged her away. Sadness swam in her eyes. “Eve… no… not again”.

Eve shrugged, indifferent to Villanelle's feelings suddenly. “He was my friend, Villanelle”.

Villanelle tried again, stepping towards her. “And what am I, Eve? I am here, I am here for you, I am trying to keep you safe… Kenny did not care about you anymore, Eve”.

Eve shook her head. “That doesn’t matter. Another baby is without a father, Villanelle… we are to blame”.

Villanelle breathed out an apparent sigh of relief at the implied shared responsibility, confused when Eve shrugged her off again.

“I am sorry for Kenny, but really… I did all I could to make sure it all went smoothly” Villanelle assured Eve. Eve attributed the younger woman's sadness to her once again not getting her own way. She thought it selfish for her to feel that way and what annoyed her most was Villanelle's lack of understanding, her inability to see things from Eve's point of view.

She took another breath to calm down, composing herself. “Well it can’t be for nothing Villanelle, where are we going?” she asked.

Villanelle eyed her for a second. It was clear that she wasn’t forgiven, or anywhere close to being forgiven, but it was better than she had hoped for, it was different from last time.

Sighing, she shrugged.

“You want to go to the Faroe Islands, so that is where we will go”.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welp. 
> 
> Come chat on Twitter - @song4everystory


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